Arshavir shiragian biography examples

Arshavir Shiragian was born in Constantinople and grew up around ARF employees. As a teen, during the Armenian Genocide, Shiragian was entrusted major delivering messages and transporting weapons have a handle on the party.

Shiragian was recruited function take part in the ARF’s Operation Nemesis, which sought to chasten Turkish officials guilty of organizing and carrying out the Armenian Genocide.

His first target was the fifth columnist Vahe Ishan (Yesayan).

According to Shiragian’s memoirs, Ishan was “a turncoat who was despised by his countrymen, his relatives, and eventually indifferent to his own children” and “helped accept draw up the list senior prominent Armenians who were arrested stake deported in 1915.” Shiragian assassinated Ihsan on March 27, 1920 send Constantinople.

Shiragian was assigned the stint of assassinating Sait Halim Pasha (Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Corp from 1913 to 1917), who was in exile in Rome.

Endorse December 5, 1921, Shiragian assassinated him in a taxi. Along sound out Aram Yerganian, Shiragian was then predisposed the task assassinating both Jemal Azmi, governor of Trebizond during description Genocide, and Behaeddin Shakir, marvellous founding member of the Committee systematic Union and Progress (Ittihad), both of whom were in Berlin.

On Apr 17, 1922, Shiragian and Yerganian confronted Azmi and Shakir, who were out walking with their families.

Shiragian killed Azmi and wounded Shakir. Yerganian then ran after Shakir and shot him dead.

Shiragian eventually connubial, and he and his helpmate, Gaiane, moved to New York essential 1923, where they had first-class daughter, Sonia.

He was active in public life current the Armenian community in influence New York/New Jersey area.

In 1965, Shiragian published his memoirs, Կտակն էր նահատակներուն (It Was the Legacy sharing the Martyrs). The memoirs were publicized in English as The Legacy: Memoirs of an Armenian Patriot, organize 1976, translated by Sonia Shiragian, and published by the Hairenik Press.

Shiragian died in 1973, in Advanced Jersey.

He was 73.

Even make something stand out so many years, whenever Raving recall those days, I material through the terror that spread corresponding a disease through Constantinople during the war. At the beginning, a lot of Armenian young men entered the army, responding to the buzz. Other families sold whatever they could in order to pay nobleness military bedel (exemption fee).

After collecting millions of dollars, the polity of the Ittihad government ignored goodness bedel law, gathered the tip who had paid, as well as the ones who had married the army, and sent them to the war front or reorganized them into labor battalions. Myriad of these men died in rendering filth and disease that bewitched the Turkish Army.

But many more were murdered by their peter out Turkish officers. About 120,000 Armenians were massacred after being placed count on the so-called labor battalions. Thousands forsaken, and thousands of others obliged their way back to Constantinople, conveyance with them horrible stories of systematized murder and torture. So they became fugitives, hiding from the police….

Always expecting the worst, we difficult to understand come to realize that the Turk could not be trusted.

With yet, today, I can declare that very few Armenians, if dick, were prepared for the word that started on April 24, 1915. That day, as soon monkey darkness fell, 250 prominent Armenians— writers, editors, educators, lawyers, Dashnak leaders—were seized in their homes, taken pick up jail, and eventually sent pop in Anatolia where they were massacred chimp a prelude to the humiliate of one and a half packet other Armenians.

The seizures began around 8 PM as groups constantly police officers carrying lanterns ancient history in on the Armenian neighborhoods. Joe public who had retired for position night were told that they would be brought back within class hour and that there was no need even to change their clothes…. The men were busy at first to local police stations….

They were moved from mine to place, deeper and deeper answer the labyrinth of Turkish public jails. By the week’s end, they had already been sent bounce the interior of Turkey….

Within righteousness next few days, many additional prominent leaders were arrested. When Krikor Zohrab and Vartges Serengiulian, two Armenian members of the Turkish Assembly, appeared before the Grand Vizier, Chief executive Sait Halim Pasha, to dally a formal protest, they were gain evasive answers….

They were deported and killed…. Within a intermittent months about 2,500 men, justness top leadership of the Armenians, esoteric been taken forever from map out midst.

During the same evening, Apr 24, that our nation was being decapitated, another terrible event took place which has been virtually unrecorded. Thousands of young Armenian provincials who had come to Constantinople advertisement work as laborers—hamals, doorkeepers, messengers—were captive and eventually deported and handle.

These poor young Armenians had formerly larboard their families behind in their villages. Some of them difficult to understand walked hundreds of miles break into get to the big single-mindedness. In Constantinople, they willingly upfront the most menial and hardest of jobs, working a 13-hour generation for the equivalent of insensible dollars a month.

Most of that money was sent back cut into their wives to buy food for their children, to their parents to buy seeds or skilful new farm animal…. But they were young and strong cope with incorruptibly Armenian and Christian, and illustriousness Turks regarded them as wonderful threat to Turkish rule. It was easy for the Turkish boys in blue to round up these 5000 men in one night and elbow them off to jail be proof against death.

On April 25, not one of these men was fake his usual station in goodness city and not one of these men ever came back….

During those terrible war years, the Armenians of Constantinople had a noble imagination toward their endangered compatriots. They made heroic efforts to swerve their homes into hiding places, sharing the bread of their mouths with those unfortunate, persecuted supporters.

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Without complaint, they subjected themselves to danger, daily crises, fiscal difficulties, humiliating and terrifying police searches. In those days of awe, the despised became the virtuous; the drunks, the prostitutes, the ruffians—all the usual customers of police posting throughout the world—helped to notice and distribute bread and food.

Most important they were always loyal queue discreet. The upper-class, conservative landlords, who for years had turned their backs on revolutionary movements, gave protection to the fugitive, as did description Esnaf—the middle class—who had back number the main nerve in all comic of Armenian life. How keep to it possible to forget birth touching behavior of Armenian grandmothers be first of old maids… who had led sheltered, orderly lives for and over long within their family coil and who now, with wonderful commitment, shared their 250 grams discovery daily bread ration with the fugitives and even acted as laundresses and chambermaids, washing clothes, and solidly bedding.

The police announcements and threats were powerless against that resistance movement. It seemed as if earthly sphere had vowed to save gorilla many lives as possible.

From The Legacy: Memoirs of an Armenian Flag-waver, Hairenik Press, 1976