Hye Sharzhoom Armenian Action
Photo: Andrew Hagopian
Eddy Thurber
Staff Writer
Groundbreaking testimony. On January 23, 2023, the Armenian Studies Program at Fresno State hosted renowned historian Ara Sarafian to speak on his new publication, Remembrances: The Assassination of Talaat Pasha (Gomidas Press, 2022). This is the first English translation of Soghomon Tehlirian’s memoir as related to Vahan Minakhorian and is a firsthand account of Tehlirian’s role in the assassination of Talaat Pasha.
Talaat Pasha, was one of the leaders of the Committee of Union and Progress, and was a chief architect of the Armenian Genocide. He fled to Berlin following the end of World War I. In 1919, an Ottoman Turkish Court Martial verdict found Talaat Pasha guilty of crimes committed as part of the CUP and he was condemned to death in abstentia.
Sarafian co-founded and presently serves as the executive director of the London-based Gomidas Institute, which conducts research and publishes information on the Armenian Genocide. Considered “the leading authority on the history of the [Armenian] genocide in the English language” (The Nation), Sarafian has been the subject of two movies about his work, “Blue Book” and “100 Years Later.”
Sarafian began his presentation by giving the background on how Tehlirian’s memoir was written and later published. Sarafian then discussed Soghomon Tehlirian’s early life.
Born into a well-to-do family in Yerznga, Turkey, in the late 1800s, Tehlirian was attending school in Germany when World War I broke out. He joined a military group in the Caucasus to fight against the Ottomans after being trapped in Serbia when the war began. He was under the command of General Antranik, one of the most famous and well-known figures in Armenian history.
Tehlirian had three “tours of duty,” where he witnessed the massacres of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey. These events and his experience with the Armenian refugees his unit escorted to safety showed him the scale of the violence perpetrated by the Young Turks. It strengthened his Armenian identity and the sentiments which would eventually lead to his involvement in the assassination of Talaat Pasha. After the assassination on March 15, 1921, Tehlirian was arrested and tried, but was swiftly released on a “not guilty” verdict after a two-day trial.
Soghomon Tehlirian wrote an account of his life in the early 1940s while under Nazi occupation in Serbia, and much of Sarafian’s research focuses on Tehlirian’s narration of the events to his three editors who wrote the original Armenian version together, and chiefly his words to Vahan Minakhorian, who spearheaded the Armenian edition.
It was a successful work at the time and considered as the most accurate, truthful, and first-person narration of the events that occurred under Operation Nemesis.
The Armenian Studies Program is appreciative to Ara Sarafian for visiting Fresno State to discuss his new book, Remembrances: The Assassination of Talaat Pasha, the most accurate memoir of Soghomon Tehlirian based on firsthand testimony from the man to whom Tehlirian told his story.