The Holy Land has been home to a small Armenian community for over 1,700 years. In the 4th century, Armenian Christians and monks settled in Jerusalem after undertaking pilgrimages to the city. Over time, they formed their own neighborhood, known today as the Armenian Quarter. The Palestinian-Armenian community in Jerusalem grew in the aftermath of the Armenian Genocide, in which the Ottoman Empire killed an estimated 1.5 million Armenians between 1915 and 1923. In the 1940s, Jerusalem-based photographer Kegham Djeghalian, who had himself fled from Armenia during the genocide, relocated to Gaza, which was then simply a Palestinian city on the Mediterranean coast. Forty years after his death, Djeghalian’s work is now on show at the Access Art Space in Cairo, the city where part of the Djeghalian family fled during the 1967 Six-Day War. Djeghalian chose to stay behind in his beloved city. His pictures offer a rare snapshot of the comparatively carefree lives of Gaza’s residents from the 1940s to the 1970s.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjp7y7/unseen-gaza-photos-1940s
