- Jakob Künzler
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Jakob Künzler (
March 8 1871 –January 15 1949 ) was a Swiss who resided in an oriental mission in Urfa and who witnessed the Armenian Genocide. [Turkish Atrocities: Statements of American Missionaries on the Destruction of Christian ... - Page 109] [The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915-1916: Documents Presented to Viscount ... - Page 538 by Arnold Joseph Toynbee]Born in
Hundwil ,Switzerland , he worked in the cantonAppenzell and made a living as a carpenter. Afterwards he was trained inBasel as an evangelist deacon ("Krankenpfleger"). In 1899 he traveled toUrfa inTurkey , where he found his own place to work. He continued to study medicine until he became an independent operating surgeon, and later in 1905 he married Elizabeth Bender, daughter of a Christian missionary and granddaughter of an Ethiopian princess.From 1915 to 1917 Künzler became an eyewitness to the
Armenian Genocide [International Affirmations of the Armenian Genocide – from International Organisations, p.7] , the subject of his 1921 book "In the Land of Blood and Tears". Despite mortal danger he helped provide, when he could, for thousands of Armenian orphans and resumed his hospital enterprise in Urfa.He was a Swiss pharmacist who had remained in Turkey serving the sick and wounded, non-Muslims and
Muslim s alike, in a hospital in Urfa who documented accounts of massacres of various Armenian labor battalion companies. [America and the Armenian Genocide of 1915 - Page 66 by Jay Murray Winter ]In October 1922 he closed his hospital he worked in and moved his family to Ghazir, near
Beirut , where later he opened a center for orphans. Later he established a settlement for Armenian widows in Beirut and a lung sanatorium in Azounieh.Jakob Künzler observed in August 1915:
He died in
Ghazir ,Lebanon .Prizes and honors
* 1947 award by the
University of Basel
* 1959 memorial in Hundwil
* 1971 earnings/service medals of the Lebanese government
* 1971 memorial in Hundwil andWalzenhausen , Switzerland (1971).Literature
* 1929: "In the Land of Blood and Tears"
* 1959: "Jakob, the Resource in the Service of Life"References
External links
* [http://www.hls-dhs-dss.ch/textes/d/D10717.php Künzler, Jakob Encyclopedia entry] (in German)
Persondata
NAME = Künzler, Jakob
ALTERNATIVE NAMES =
SHORT DESCRIPTION = Swiss pharmacist and author, witness to the Armenian Genocide
DATE OF BIRTH =March 8 ,1871
PLACE OF BIRTH =Hundwil ,Appenzell ,Switzerland
DATE OF DEATH =January 15 ,1949
PLACE OF DEATH =Ghazir ,Lebanon
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