Emma Darling Cushman – Savior of Thousands of Armenian Children

Pupils of the Mayetta School in Kansas prepared a documentary about an American nurse who had saved thousands of Armenian children orphaned during the Armenian Genocide in Ottoman Turkey. This nurse was Emma Darling Cushman, reports cjonline.

After the government of the Ottoman Empire commenced its policy of expelling “foreigners” from “its” territory, Cushman remained in the hospital in Turkish Konya, where she had worked for more than ten years.

After the Armenian Genocide began, Cushman turned the hospital into a shelter, where she hid children and tried to unite separated families. As student Luke Boyden noted, what Cushman was doing was very dangerous since the Ottoman government was looking for Armenians everywhere.

In addition to studying the facts of the Genocide, students also conducted interviews with experts on the Armenian Genocide, in particular, with Richard Hovhannisyan and Sarah Cohen.

For the documentary video, the authors received a prize of $7.5 thousand. They also had the opportunity to come up with an inscription for the tombstone of Emma Cushman at the Armenian cemetery in Cairo. They decided that the tombstone should read “Emma Darling Cushman: A Light in the Darkness.”

Emma Cushman: A Light in the Darkness