By Varsen Agabakian-Shahin Palestinian Minister of State for Foreign Affairs

Jerusalemites are mourning the passing away of a distinguished member of the Armenian Jerusalem community. Adrineh Karakashian 1927-2024 will be best remembered as a prominent Pediatrician who served the Palestinian refugee community and Palestinians for over 60 years. Although she specifically served in the Jerusalem area, her reputation grew beyond the Jerusalem boundaries.

She came from Lebanon as a young Pediatrician and worked at the Augusta Victoria Hospital (AVH) in Jerusalem and with the UNRWA healthcare system. During her service with UNRWA, a relatively large number of Palestinian Armenians worked with UNRWA services whether at its headquarters in Jerusalem or UNRWA’s health care or social system.

Karakashian treated children and groomed nurses and other practicing physicians or nurses mentoring hundreds of working or training in the pediatric ward at AVH and was among the few if not the only female physicians in Jerusalem in the 1950s. She also had her private clinic where she served thousands of children -Armenians and Arabs- often free of charge. She loved Palestine and opted to stay in Jerusalem.

Karakashian served along with prominent Jerusalemite Palestinian Armenians in health care: physicians, dentists, nurses, midwives, pharmacists, and others who candidly served Palestine and the medical profession in the last century and who will forever be remembered as part of Palestinian history in Jerusalem.

I would confidently claim that every single family in Jerusalem knew Karakashian and has visited her clinic seeking medical consultation for their children,

My parents included as I and my two siblings have been frequently treated by Dr. Karakashian and so have our children. She was a pediatrician in highest demand in Jerusalem for some 50 years.

Children loved Karakashian. She had a petite body and a distinct voice to which children were at ease. She was skillful in easing sick children’s pain and their parents’ anxiety. Her dedication to serving sick and healthy children on routine visits was unparalleled. She continued her uninterrupted medical service way into her eighties although with fewer daily hours in the last years in service.  

Her private clinic located in Shufat on the main road from Jerusalem to Ramallah was a landmark.

 Taxi or bus drivers or passengers at large referred to the site as the Karakashian juncture and so did the Palestinian population at large.   

She will also be remembered as the Doctor with compassion towards her profession and dedication to childcare especially for the ones in need and a role model of tolerance and understanding, who gave to others with a sense of purpose. She will be remembered for her philanthropy, especially towards education to which she contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Karakashian was laid to rest in peace in the Armenian Cemetery on Mount Zion in Jerusalem, the city she loved, and will forever be remembered as the compassionate and dedicated pediatrician who loved all.