35. Taner Akcam, The Young Turks’ Crime against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013).
CHAPTER 4: TEHLIRIAN GOES TO WAR
1. Mikayel Varandian, Murad of Sepastia, trans. Ara Ghazarians (Arlington, MA: Armenian Cultural Foundation, 2006), p. 5. The full quote reads, “Since Murad had not received any education, he was almost illiterate, like Antranig and many others of our fighters.”
2. Tehlirian memoir, p. 50.
3. See Yervant Odian, Accursed Years: My Exile and Return from Der Zor, 1914–1919, trans. Ara Stepan Melkonian (London: Gomidas Institute, 2009); also Raymond Kevorkian, The Armenian Genocide: A Complete History (London: I. B. Tauris, 2011), pp. 251–53.
4. In addition to Gomidas, almost an entire generation of Armenian writers were rounded up and killed. Significant authors on this list include Yervand Srmakeshkhanlian, Artashes Harutiunian, Ruben Zardarian, Tigran Chrakian, Gegham Barseghian, Daniel Varuzhan, Tigran Cheokiurian, Ruben Sevak, and Atom Yarchanian (Siamanto). See Agop J. Hacikyan, coordinating ed., The Heritage of Armenian Literature, vol. 3 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2005), pp. 658–853.
5. Der Prozess Talaat Pascha: Stenographischer Prozessbericht [The Talat Pasha Trial], foreword by Armin Wegner (Berlin: Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft fur Politik, 1921), p. 60. This is the original courtroom transcript, supplied to me by Rolf Hosfeld of Lepsiushaus, Berlin, and translated by Joel Golb.
6. Ibid., p. 60.
7. Michael Bobelian, Children of Armenia: A Forgotten Genocide and the Century-Long Struggle for Justice (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009), pp. 13–15.
8. Tehlirian memoir, p. 67.
9. Rafael de Nogales, Four Years beneath the Crescent, trans. Muna Lee (London: Sterndale Classics, 2003), chap. 7, “The Siege of Van,” pp. 69–87.
10. Tehlirian memoir, pp. 75, 80.
11. Ibid., p. 90.
98. Jacques Semelin, Claire Andrieu, and Sarah Gensburger, eds., Resisting Genocide: The Multiple Forms of Rescue, trans. Emma Bentley and Cynthia Schoch (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 205.
13. Omer Bartov and Phyllis Mack, eds., In God’s Name: Genocide and Religion in the Twentieth Century (New York: Berghahn Books, 2001), p. 8.
14. The account that follows is drawn from Fethiye Cetin, My Grandmother: A Memoir, trans. Maureen Freely (London: Verso, 2008), pp. 61–80, 86–88.
15. Ibid., p. ix.
16. Jacobsen, Diaries of a Danish Missionary, pp. 78, 102, 201.
17. The account that follows is from Kevorkian, The Armenian Genocide, pp. 309–10.
18. Tehlirian memoir, p. 95.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid., p. 103.
21. Ibid., p. 115.
22. Ibid., p. 116.
23. James B. Gidney, A Mandate for Armenia (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1967), pp. 64, 65.
24. This was the original name of the communist state that followed the Bolshevik Revolution. In 1922 a larger entity was born: the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
25. Richard Hovanissian, ed., The Republic of Armenia, 4 vols. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 1:21.
26. Tehlirian memoir, pp. 111–12.
27. Ibid., p. 157.
CHAPTER 5: THE DEBT
1. Trumpener, Germany and the Ottoman Empire, p. 359.
2. Margaret MacMillan, Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World (New York: Random House, 2002), p. 372.
3. The former version of this newspaper, Azadamard (Struggle for Freedom), was shuttered on April 24, 1915. Its editor, Kegham Parseghian, was arrested on that date and subsequently murdered.
4. Tehlirian memoir, p. 190.
5. Quoted in Joan George, Merchants in Exile: The Armenians in Manchester, England, 1835–1935 (London: Gomidas Institute, 2002), pp. 184–85.
6. The British were reluctant to bang the drum too loudly regarding “crimes against humanity” now that the war was over. They did not want to call attention to their own record in the colonies.
7. Vahakn N. Dadrian and Taner Akcam, Judgment at Istanbul: The Armenian Genocide Trials (New York: Berghahn Books, 2011), p. 196.
8. Tehlirian memoir, p. 206.
9. Sylvia Kedourie, ed., Seventy-Five Years of the Turkish Republic (London: Frank Cass Publishers, 2000), p. 48.
10. Andrew Mango, Ataturk: The Biography of the Founder of Modern Turkey (Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 1999), p. 196.
11. Marian MacCurdy credits Manoog Harpartsoumian, an attorney who was active in ARF conferences, with compiling the “list.” Marian Mesrobian MacCurdy, Sacred Justice: The Voices and Legacy of the Armenian Operation Nemesis (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2015), p. 100.
12. Nemesis is the ancient Greek goddess often described as the distributor of retribution for evil deeds, thus creating justice or balance in the world.
13. Jacques Derogy, Resistance and Revenge: The Armenian Assassination of the Turkish Leaders Responsible for the 1915 Massacres and Deportations, trans. A. M. Berrett (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1990), p. 71.
14. Shahan Natali, “On the Trail of the Great Criminal [Medz vojrakordin hedk`erov],” trans. Aram Arkun, Nayiri (Beirut) 12, no. 1 (May 24, 1964), pt. 1, pp. 4–5.
15. Tehlirian memoir, p. 232.
16. The account that follows is drawn from Tehlirian memoir, pp. 236–39.
17. Sarkis Atamian, “A Portrait of Immortality,” pt. 1, “Soghomon Tehlirian,” Armenian Review 13, no. 3 (Autumn 1960): 50.
18. Tehlirian memoir, p. 248.
19. See Andon Kosh in Badmakrut’iwn Hay H’eghap’okhagan Tashnagts’ut’ean, vol. 2, p. 110.
20. Author interview with Marian MacCurdy April 15, 2013; see also MacCurdy and Libaridian, Sacred Justice.
CHAPTER 6: THE HUNT
1. Christopher J. Walker, Armenia: The Survival of a Nation, 2nd ed. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990).
2. Derogy, Resistance and Revenge, p. 74.
3. Kershaw, Hitler, p. 96.
4. Ibid.
5. George Grosz, An Autobiography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), p. 119.
6. Aaron Sachaklian (1879–1964) was an immigrant to the United States who had established his credentials as a CPA at a large insurance firm in Syracuse at the time of the conspiracy. His full story is told in Marian Mesrobian MacCurdy and Gerard Libaridian’s book Sacred Justice: The Voices and Legacy of the Armenian Operation Nemesis.
7. Hrach Papazian (1892–1960) would serve in the Syrian parliament in 1932 and 1943 and was a member of the ARF Bureau from 1947 to 1959.
8. Vahan Zakarian (1883–1980). In Germany he was one of the founders of the German-Armenian Society, presided over by Johannes Lepsius. He was counselor of economic affairs at the Republic of Armenia mission in Berlin. He would also serve as Tehlirian’s interpreter at the subsequent Berlin trial.
9. Hagop Zorian (1894–1942) was a history student at the University of Berlin. In later life he would become one of the leading economic historians of Soviet Armenia from 1925 until 1937, when he was arrested during the Stalinist purges. He was tried in 1939 and sentenced on the charge of having collaborated in Talat Pasha’s assassination. He died in exile.
10. Haig Ter-Ohanian (1883–?) was an active ARF member and author.
11. I am indebted to Vartan Matiossian for allowing me to read his unpublished lecture on Haigo, presented at the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research in Belmont, Massachusetts, on June 5, 2014, from which the biographical information on these figures was drawn. In this lecture he reveals for the first time the previously unknown true identity of agent Haigo. Matiossian identifies one of the collaborating resident artists in Berlin as the renowned poet Avetik Isahakian (1875–1957).
