The America that welcomed: Armenian DPs from postwar Europe to LA
Editor’s note: This is the first in a series titled America at 250: An Armenian American Retrospective, running throughout 2026 in The Armenian Weekly, curated by former Weekly editor Dr. Khatchig Mouradian and dedicated to the 250th anniversary of America’s founding and the history of Armenian American life. The March 2026 magazine issue, also edited by Dr. Mouradian, is dedicated to the same theme.
On Jan. 7, 1948, President Harry S. Truman in his State of the Union address said, “Many thousands of displaced persons, still living in camps overseas, should be allowed entry into the United States. I again urge Congress to pass suitable legislation at once so that this Nation may do its share in caring for the homeless and suffering refugees of all faiths. I believe that the admission of these persons will add to the strength and energy of this nation.”1 In the America of 2026, it is hard to comprehend that such a resolve by a president and an attitude toward the plight of refugees was a reality in the not-so-distant past.
In May of the same year, 1948, 4,200 miles away from the U.S. Capitol where Truman delivered his plea to the Congress, some 1,500 Soviet Armenian civilians and former POWs stranded at the army barracks (Funkerkaserne) in Bad Cannstatt borough of Stuttgart, Germany, since the end of the war, celebrated the 30th anniversary of the Armenian Republic.
George Mardikian, the owner of Omar Khayyam’s restaurant in San Francisco, credited with introducing Middle Eastern dishes to America, served as a food supply consultant for the U.S. Army, and as such got to visit the troops for inspections. While traveling through the American bases in Europe in the cold winter of 1947, he was led to Funkerkaserne. Upon discovering his compatriots who looked at him as “one of their own, who spoke their own tongue, who shared their ancestors and their heritage…and had come to them—from America”, with the words “I can solemnly promise you…it is [our] duty to help you, to give you a chance to find homes for yourselves so that you can start building your ojakhs all over again,” he vowed to make efforts to rescue the displaced Armenians. Mardikian, who had become close friends with many commanders of the American forces in Europe, along with a San Francisco lawyer Suren Saroyan, founded the American National Committee to Aid Homeless Armenians (ANCHA), which quickly through that very American tradition of a grassroots campaign was able to raise $250,000 from its delegates under the banner, “For liberty and a chance.”
Since the Immigration Act of 1924 (Johnson-Reed Act) limited the number of immigrants allowed entry into the United States through a national origins quota and provided immigration visas to 2% of the total number of people of each nationality in the United States as of the 1890 national census, ANCHA along with others continuously made the case for amending the law to assist the refugees stranded across Europe. On June 25, 1948, Congress passed and Truman signed the act to authorize for a limited period the admission into the United States of displaced persons (DPs) for permanent residence. In 1950, when an additional revision nearly doubled the number of the displaced who would be allowed to enter the country, President Truman also admitted the “combined efforts of both political parties, supported by groups and organizations broadly representative of all parts of our country” as “a splendid example of the way in which joint action can strengthen and unify our country.” Read the full article in the Armenian Weekly.