Edward Alexander

Soghomon Tehlirian, the sole survivor of a horrendous massacre of Armenians - including his mother and sister - by Turkish death squads begins a search for the architect of the Armenian Genocide, Talaat Pasha, former Turkish Grand Vizier and Minister of the Interior, which takes him to the United States and to many European countries where Talaat is rumored to be in hiding. In Switzerland he learns that Talaat is in Berlin, whereupon Tehlirian travels to the German capital and enrolls in a school, but alert to every rumor about his quarry. On March 15, 1921, after having found Talaat sequestered in a villa and living a secret life with a daily routine, Tehlirian accosts him on a major thoroughfare and shoots him to death. He does not resist arrest and is held for trial which takes place three months later. Tehlirian openly admits to his crime, observing - “I have killed a man but I am not a murderer,” adding - “I do not regard myself as guilty because my conscience is at peace.” A succession of witness - a German general, German nurses and engineers building the Berlin-Baghdad railway, many of them eye-witnesses to the atrocities, and most prominently a German human rights activist Dr. Johannes Lepsius as well as Armenian survivors, gave devastating testimony to the horrors suffered by the Armenian subjects of the Ottoman Empire’s Young Turk regime. When the twelve-man German jury issued its verdict of Not Guilty, the courtroom burst into cheers and applause.


“A wonderful book of great importance, and beautifully written…at times like history, at times like a novel or even a ‘thriller,’ pervaded throughout by a sense of moral integrity and honesty.”