As a result of the Allied victory in the First World War , tens of thousands of survivors of the Armenian Genocide found themselves living in the French-occupied part of the Ottoman Empire in Cilicia , and far more in the French Mandate territories of Syria and Lebanon , as the death camps of Deir ez-Zor were in Syria . In 1920 , the French army under General Henri Gouraud ordered the French Armenian Legion to lay down their weapons and that the Armenian refugees should leave at once . He had formed a " peaceful , reconstructive policy " with the Turkish nationalists to pull French troops out of Cilicia , but all that ended up doing was allowing attacks against Armenian civilians to resume . Most Cilician Armenian fled alongside the French and were resettled in refugee camps in Alexandretta , Aleppo , the Beqaa Valley ( e.g. Anjar ) and Beirut . From there , entire families took the opportunity to flee to France . The influx of the Armenian Genocide survivors brought tens of thousands of Armenians to France . By the early 1920s , approximately 50,000 to 60,000 Armenians lived in France . According to another source 90,000 genocide survivors settled in France , more than half of whom were villagers
Armenian Genocide
Armenian Genocide
Armenians in France