ABSTRACT
In its second year, the League of Nations took steps with regard to the “reclamation” of abducted women and children in Turkey and in western Asia. As a result of the work of Neutral House in Constantinople and the Rescue House in Aleppo, thousands of mainly Armenian women, girls, and a few boys were encouraged to escape from their abductors or owners and find shelter in the institutional homes established to rehabilitate them and return them to their relatives, if possible, and otherwise remove them from conditions of sexual and labor servitude, as well as prostitution. Comparable specific actions to reclaim Assyrian women have not been documented. But we know of some cases that are merely the tip of the dark arrow that points to thousands of women disappearing from their communities between 1914 and 1922. This chapter explores the characteristics of these cases. Its sources include fictional works, some government records, family histories, and Christian missionary accounts. Fiction in particular allows us to recall incidents and memories with which neither victims nor their families wished to be directly associated by name.
