MODERNIZATION AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE FIRST CULTURAL AND ATHLETIC CENTERS
Many AYA members left Syria and Lebanon for Soviet Armenia during the 1946-1947 “nerkaght.” Among them were quite a few Melkonian School graduates, who had a reputation for being the association’s most active members. The result was that several AYA chapters lost most of their membership, among them the Antranig Club in Nahr Beirut or the clubs in Homs and Azez. The club in Afrin was even permanently closed for lack of members.18 In Damascus, AYA leaders faced another problem: the Syrian state expropriated the Antranig Club-house at the beginning of World War II, leaving the city’s youth association with¬out a locale.
As a result of these changes, the AYA had, by 1950, only eleven chapters with around one thousand members.19 On the other hand, a few new chapters were opened in this period, in Ras el-Ain Raqqa, and Hasaka, in northwestern Syria. It should be added that the profound social mutations underway in the Armenian diaspora from the 1950s on had altered people’s needs. As a result of the emergence, in the Near Eastern countries, of new, ... Read all
The Armenian Youth Association
1945 General Assembly of the AYA in Beirut, with Catholicos Karekin I Hovsepian (AYA arch./Beirut).
Members of the AYA's Beirut Central Board in 1947
(AYA arch./ Beirut).
Scouts from the AYA's Zahleh chapter in September 1937. (Arch. B. Nubar/ Paris).
Brass band of the AYA's “Antranig” chapter in Beirut around 1947 (Arch. B. Nubar/ Paris).