Arshavir Shiragian - The Legacy

Book excerpt: The Legacy: Memoirs of an Armenian Patriot chronicles the extraordinary story of Arshavir Shiragian who embarked on an international man hunt to track down and assassinate the Turkish masterminds of the Armenian Genocide. During World War I, the Ottoman Empire undertook a systematic extermination of its Armenian subjects from their historic homeland. Several of the key perpetrators fled to Europe as 1.5 million Armenians lay dead. In The Legacy, Shiragian recounts how he located and assassinated the men responsible for this crime against humanity. He describes how he tracked down and killed the Grand Vizier, Sayid Halim Pasha, in Rome. A few months later, Shiragian, together with Aram Yerganian, located and shot dead Jemal Azmi Pasha, the governor-general of Trebizond, and Dr. Behaeddin Shakir Bey, the mastermind of the Armenian Genocide.