This gravestone which is at Hackensack Cemetery, located at 289 Hackensack Avenue Hackensack, New Jersey, reveals Arshavir Shiragian’s connection to Hackensack since passing and forevermore.
This information on Arshavir Shiragian was obtained from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. We do not usually use this as a resource, but all sources I have seen have stated this same basic information almost verbatim.
Arshavir Shiragian was born in 1900 in Constantinople of the Ottoman Empire at the time. The political party he was affiliated with was the Armenian Revolutionary Federation. Arshavir Shiragian was an Armenian writer who was noted for his assassination of Said Halim Pasha and Cemal Azmi as an act of vengeance for their roles in the Armenian Genocide. He is also noted for writing his memoirs The Will of the Martyrs which provide an accurate description of his life during the Armenian Genocide and the Operation Nemesis.
Life:
Arshavir Shiragian was born in Constantinople, Ottoman Empire in 1900. [1][2] Shirakian grew up around many members of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation. During the Armenian Genocide, Shiragian was entrusted the job of smuggling weapons and delivering secret messages amongst party members. Shiragian would describe in his memoirs that during those days, there were many hate rallies against Armenians and that many Armenian establishments were vandalized such as the Tokatlian Hotel.
Operation Nemesis:
Operation Nemesis was a response to the Arminian genocide. Arshavir Shiragian's first target was assassinating Armenian traitor Vahe Ishan (Yesayan). According to his memoirs, Vahe Ishan was "a traitor who was despised by his countrymen, his relatives, and eventually by his own children" and "helped to draw up the list of prominent Armenians who were arrested and deported in 1915. Shiragian assassinated Ihsan on March 27, 1920 in Constantinople.
Shirakian was also given the task to assassinate Sait Halim Pasha while he was in exile in Rome, Italy. Shiragian took up residence in a house on 28 Via Cola di Rienzo in Rome. On December 5, 1921, Shiragian assassinated Sait Halim Pasha while he was in a taxi on the home on Via Eustacchio street.
Shiragian, along with Aram Yerganian, was later given the task to assassinate both Cemal Azmi and Behaeddin Shirag, who were in Berlin. On April 17, 1922, Shiragian and Yerganian encountered Azmi and Shirag walking with their families at the Uhlandstrasse street. Shiragian managed to kill only Azmi and wound Shirag. Yerganian later ran after Shirag and managed to kill him with a shot to his head.
Later life:
Arshavir Shiragian eventually married his wife Kayane and moved to New York in 1923, where they had a daughter, Sonia. He also was active in public life in the New York/New Jersey area and its Armenian community. He published his memoirs in 1965 entitled (It Was the Legacy of the Martyrs). Shirakian died April 12,1973 at the age of 73 and is buried in the Hackensack Cemetery in New Jersey.
He is recognized and honored as a national hero by Armenians, to understand why.
Click here to view information on the Arminian Genocide.
Wikipedia material
Recorded by:
Bob Meli
July 1, 2019
