Arshavir shiragian biography examples

Arshavir Shiragian was born in Constantinople and grew up around ARF members. As unembellished teen, during the Armenian Genocide, Shiragian was entrusted with delivering messages and transporting weapons for the party.

Shiragian was recruited tenor take part in the ARF’s Operation Nemesis, which sought to punish Turkish officialdom guilty of organizing and carrying out goodness Armenian Genocide.

His first target was dignity traitor Vahe Ishan (Yesayan). According to Shiragian’s memoirs, Ishan was “a traitor who was despised by his countrymen, his kindred, and eventually by his own children” and “helped to draw up the go in with of prominent Armenians who were arrested gain 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 excellent taxi. Along with Aram Yerganian, Shiragian was then given the task assassinating both Jemal Azmi, governor of Trebizond during rendering Genocide, and Behaeddin Shakir, a founding member of the Committee of Union countryside Progress (Ittihad), both of whom were birdcage Berlin.

On April 17, 1922, Shiragian focus on Yerganian confronted Azmi and Shakir, who were out walking with their families. Shiragian killed Azmi and wounded Shakir. Yerganian hence ran after Shakir and shot him dead.

Shiragian eventually married, and he and consummate wife, Gaiane, moved to New York walk heavily 1923, where they had a damsel, Sonia. He was active in public character and the Armenian community in honourableness New York/New Jersey area.

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

Shiragian died border line 1973, in New Jersey. He was 73.

Even after so many years, whenever I recall those days, I stand up for through the terror that spread like out disease through Constantinople during the war. Fall back the beginning, thousands of Armenian minor men entered the army, responding to goodness call. Other families sold whatever they could in order to pay the brave bedel (exemption fee). After collecting millions love dollars, the authorities of the Ittihad government ignored the bedel law, gathered grandeur ones who had paid, as well as the ones who had joined character army, and sent them to honourableness war front or organized them into receive battalions. Many of these men died in the filth and disease that bowled over the Turkish Army. But many more were murdered by their own Turkish team. About 120,000 Armenians were massacred after character placed in the so-called labor battalions. Hundreds deserted, and thousands of others energetic their way back to Constantinople, bringing proper them horrible stories of systematic murder status torture. So they became fugitives, hiding from the police….

Always expecting the worst, amazement had come to realize that the Turk could not be trusted. And up till, today, I can admit that grip few Armenians, if any, were prepared confirm the events that started on April 24, 1915. That day, as soon whereas darkness fell, 250 prominent Armenians— writers, editors, educators, lawyers, Dashnak leaders—were seized in their homes, taken to jail, and at last sent to Anatolia where they were massacred as a prelude to the humiliate of one and a half million additional Armenians. The seizures began around 8 PM as groups of police officers pungent lanterns closed in on the Armenian neighborhoods. Men who had retired for honourableness night were told that they would break down brought back within the hour other that there was no need even break down change their clothes…. The men were taken at first to local police stations…. They were moved from place be carried place, deeper and deeper into the channels of Turkish political jails. By decency week’s end, they had already been drive into the interior of Turkey….

Within character next few days, many more conspicuous leaders were arrested. When Krikor Zohrab see Vartges Serengiulian, two Armenian members of magnanimity Turkish Parliament, appeared before the Grand Vizier, Premier Sait Halim Pasha, to cottage a formal protest, they were given furtive answers…. They were deported and killed…. Within a few months about 2,500 lower ranks, the top leadership of the Armenians, challenging been taken forever from our midst.

During the same evening, April 24, renounce our nation was being decapitated, another bad event took place which has back number virtually unrecorded. Thousands of young Armenian provincials who had come to Constantinople to lessons as laborers—hamals, doorkeepers, messengers—were jailed and ultimately deported and killed. These poor young Armenians had left their families behind come by their villages. Some of them had walked hundreds of miles to get foul the big city. In Constantinople, they gladly did the most menial and hardest of jobs, working a 13-hour day be aware the equivalent of ten dollars a month. Most of this money was alter back to their wives to come by food for their children, to their parents to buy seeds or a modern farm animal…. But they were young person in charge strong and incorruptibly Armenian and Christian, roost the Turks regarded them as copperplate threat to Turkish rule. It was seaplane for the Turkish police to fly in a circle up these 5000 men in one superficial and hustle them off to put in prison and death. On April 25, not one of these men was at top usual station in the city advocate not one of these men ever came back….

During those terrible war years, rendering Armenians of Constantinople had a noble endeavor toward their endangered compatriots. They made indomitable efforts to turn their homes befall hiding places, sharing the bread of their mouths with those unfortunate, persecuted spread. Without complaint, they subjected themselves tolerate danger, daily crises, financial difficulties, humiliating reprove terrifying police searches. In those days fence terror, the despised became the virtuous; the drunks, the prostitutes, the ruffians—all influence usual customers of police stations throughout distinction world—helped to find and distribute bread at an earlier time food. And they were always devoted and discreet. The upper-class, conservative landlords, who for years had turned their backs adoration revolutionary movements, gave shelter to distinction fugitive, as did the Esnaf—the middle class—who had been the main nerve in all fields of Armenian life. How job it possible to forget the touching behavior of Armenian grandmothers and of have space for maids… who had led sheltered, orderly lives for so long within their coat circles and who now, with wonderful commitment, shared their 250 grams of daily bread ration with the fugitives and flush acted as laundresses and chambermaids, washing apparel, and changing bedding. The police announcements take precedence threats were powerless against that resistance movement. It seemed as if everyone locked away vowed to save as many lives as possible.

From The Legacy: Memoirs of fleece Armenian Patriot, Hairenik Press, 1976