Picture this: it's Berlin in March of 1921. A young Armenian engineering student is walking along a street in the quiet, wealthy neighborhood of Charlottenburg. Years before, his whole family was killed—including his mother, who was executed in front of his eyes. One night, she comes to him in a dream and tells him to avenge her murder. Now, as he walks, he sees the man responsible: Talat Pasha, a Turkish official during World War One. He slows. He makes eye contact with him. Then he walks a few paces by, turns around, and shoots him in the back.
That's the story of Soghomon Tehlirian, who went to trial—and was later acquitted—of murdering Talat Pasha. The problem? It's not quite true.
"That is the story he told in court. That is the story that endured," explains Eric Bogosian, playwright, actor, and now author of the new book "Operation Nemesis: The Assassination Plot That Avenged The Armenian Genocide." "In fact, he was not an engineering student. He didn't just happen to be in Berlin. He was on assignment to track Talat and kill him."
Tehlirian was, in fact, one of a number of assassins hired by businessmen based in the United States to target and kill Turkish officials involved in the Armenian Genocide. The Genocide, carried out by the Ottoman Empire in the 1910s, was responsible for the death of approximately 1 million people and even for coining the term 'genocide' itself. The cabal, meanwhile—founded and based in Watertown and dubbed "Operation Nemesis"—was responsible for the death of seven of their targets.
Eric Bogosian came to this story in an unusual way. A successful actor and author—you might recognize him from "Law and Order" or the Oliver Stone movie "Talk Radio," which is based on one of his plays—he grew up hearing snippets of stories of the horrors of the genocide, in passing, from his Armenian grandparents. As an adult, he began to wonder what they had experienced.
Once he began research on "Operation Nemesis," those stories were cast in an entirely new light.
"I don't know what my grandparents were holding within their own souls, or people at my church when I was a kid," he said. "In fact, there are people today who I'm meeting on this book tour who still carry this weight in a big way, because their parents had been so seriously traumatized by their experiences, people tell me 'my mother cried every day. Every day my whole life, my mother cried.' Growing up in that, they too carry this weight."
That weight may feel especially heavy this year, which marks the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the Armenian Genocide. With the anniversary has come a renewed debate over whether the event is recognized, officially, as a 'genocide' at all. Despite being an ardent supporter of using the term during his campaign, President Obama has carefully avoided it since taking office—a reversal that stunned many observers, including Bogosian.
"It's a genocide. There's no other way to look at it," Bogosian said. "The Obama situation is weird, because it's almost the theater of the absurd. He had been one of the most eloquent speakers on the genocide. He didn't just say he would say the word: he explained why."
"I won't defend him. I think his actions spoke for themselves," he continued.
To hear more from author Eric Bogosian, tune in to Boston Public Radio above.
