Remembrances

Soghomon Tehlirian's account tells how he came to kill Talaat Pasha, the former Ottoman Minister of Interior, on a Berlin street in 1921. A survivor of the Armenian Genocide, he held Talaat responsible for the murder of his entire family in Yerznga, in Ottoman Turkey.

The narrative begins with what Tehlirian witnessed of the 1915 genocide and then follows his search for Talaat as the First World War ended. It goes on to describe how the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, then the largest Armenian political party, recruited him to carry out the assassination.

The book also covers Tehlirian's trial in Berlin and his acquittal. The killing and the trial had far-reaching effects, including on Raphael Lemkin, who coined the word "genocide" and later worked toward the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.