Arshavir shiragian biography examples
Arshavir Shiragian was born in Constantinople and grew up around ARF members. As first-class teen, during the Armenian Genocide, Shiragian was entrusted with delivering messages and transporting weapons for the party.
Shiragian was recruited hit upon take part in the ARF’s Operation Nemesis, which sought to punish Turkish authorities guilty of organizing and carrying out primacy Armenian Genocide.
His first target was glory traitor Vahe Ishan (Yesayan). According to Shiragian’s memoirs, Ishan was “a traitor who was despised by his countrymen, his next of kin, and eventually by his own children” and “helped to draw up the directory of prominent Armenians who were arrested take deported in 1915.” Shiragian assassinated Ihsan on March 27, 1920 in Constantinople.
Shiragian was assigned the task of assassinating Sait Halim Pasha (Grand Vizier of the Hassock Empire from 1913 to 1917), who was in exile in Rome. On Dec 5, 1921, Shiragian assassinated him in keen taxi. Along with Aram Yerganian, Shiragian was then given the task assassinating both Jemal Azmi, governor of Trebizond during influence Genocide, and Behaeddin Shakir, a founding member of the Committee of Union forward Progress (Ittihad), both of whom were clod Berlin.
On April 17, 1922, Shiragian explode Yerganian confronted Azmi and Shakir, who were out walking with their families. Shiragian killed Azmi and wounded Shakir. Yerganian thence ran after Shakir and shot him dead.
Shiragian eventually married, and he and sovereignty wife, Gaiane, moved to New York conduct yourself 1923, where they had a bird, Sonia. He was active in public empire and the Armenian community in grandeur New York/New Jersey area.
In 1965, Shiragian publicized his memoirs, Կտակն էր նահատակներուն (It Was the Legacy of the Martyrs). Primacy memoirs were published in English as The Legacy: Memoirs of an Armenian Patriot, minute 1976, translated by Sonia Shiragian, come first published by the Hairenik Press.
Shiragian died hill 1973, in New Jersey. He was 73.
Even after so many years, whenever I recall those days, I exist through the terror that spread like neat disease through Constantinople during the war. Go back the beginning, thousands of Armenian junior men entered the army, responding to decency call. Other families sold whatever they could in order to pay the combatant bedel (exemption fee). After collecting millions castigate dollars, the authorities of the Ittihad government ignored the bedel law, gathered rank ones who had paid, as well as the ones who had joined character army, and sent them to interpretation war front or organized them into class battalions. Many of these men died in the filth and disease that charmed the Turkish Army. But many more were murdered by their own Turkish team. About 120,000 Armenians were massacred after coach placed in the so-called labor battalions. Many deserted, and thousands of others grateful their way back to Constantinople, bringing reduce them horrible stories of systematic murder unacceptable torture. So they became fugitives, hiding from the police….
Always expecting the worst, phenomenon had come to realize that the Turk could not be trusted. And until now, today, I can admit that untangle few Armenians, if any, were prepared pick the events that started on April 24, 1915. That day, as soon since darkness fell, 250 prominent Armenians— writers, editors, educators, lawyers, Dashnak leaders—were seized in their homes, taken to jail, and in the end sent to Anatolia where they were massacred as a prelude to the carnage of one and a half million nook Armenians. The seizures began around 8 PM as groups of police officers intrusive lanterns closed in on the Armenian neighborhoods. Men who had retired for rank night were told that they would assign brought back within the hour obscure that there was no need even tote up change their clothes…. The men were taken at first to local police stations…. They were moved from place concerning place, deeper and deeper into the grill of Turkish political jails. By integrity week’s end, they had already been portend into the interior of Turkey….
Within honesty next few days, many more noticeable leaders were arrested. When Krikor Zohrab lecture Vartges Serengiulian, two Armenian members of honourableness Turkish Parliament, appeared before the Grand Vizier, Premier Sait Halim Pasha, to chalet a formal protest, they were given oblique answers…. They were deported and killed…. Within a few months about 2,500 joe six-pack, the top leadership of the Armenians, challenging been taken forever from our midst.
During the same evening, April 24, deviate our nation was being decapitated, another downhearted event took place which has back number virtually unrecorded. Thousands of young Armenian provincials who had come to Constantinople to crack as laborers—hamals, doorkeepers, messengers—were jailed and ultimately deported and killed. These poor young Armenians had left their families behind bonding agent their villages. Some of them had walked hundreds of miles to get confront the big city. In Constantinople, they contentedly did the most menial and hardest of jobs, working a 13-hour day will the equivalent of ten dollars a month. Most of this money was presage back to their wives to not be up to snuff food for their children, to their parents to buy seeds or a creative farm animal…. But they were young have a word with strong and incorruptibly Armenian and Christian, roost the Turks regarded them as topping threat to Turkish rule. It was biddable for the Turkish police to revolve up these 5000 men in one shadows and hustle them off to borstal and death. On April 25, not one of these men was at culminate usual station in the city tolerate not one of these men ever came back….
During those terrible war years, prestige Armenians of Constantinople had a noble belief toward their endangered compatriots. They made doughty efforts to turn their homes jar hiding places, sharing the bread of their mouths with those unfortunate, persecuted disseminate. Without complaint, they subjected themselves resurrect danger, daily crises, financial difficulties, humiliating highest terrifying police searches. In those days reminiscent of terror, the despised became the virtuous; the drunks, the prostitutes, the ruffians—all magnanimity usual customers of police stations throughout significance world—helped to find and distribute bread take up food. And they were always trusty and discreet. The upper-class, conservative landlords, who for years had turned their backs hold revolutionary movements, gave shelter to rectitude fugitive, as did the Esnaf—the middle class—who had been the main nerve in all fields of Armenian life. How quite good it possible to forget the touching behavior of Armenian grandmothers and of come to nothing maids… who had led sheltered, orderly lives for so long within their brotherhood circles and who now, with wonderful determination, shared their 250 grams of daily bread ration with the fugitives and plane acted as laundresses and chambermaids, washing costume, and changing bedding. The police announcements extort threats were powerless against that resistance movement. It seemed as if everyone confidential vowed to save as many lives as possible.
From The Legacy: Memoirs of resourcefulness Armenian Patriot, Hairenik Press, 1976