Arshavir Shiragian weaves a tale of intrigue, horror, betrayal, and ultimate success. He tells of his first experiences as a teenager with the Ottoman police looking for fugitives from the roundups of Armenian intellectuals to his young manhood as an avenger of the murder of Armenians during the genocide.
If the Allies had remained true to their professed—and declared—ideals and policies, this book would not have been written, since the Allies themselves would have condemned and carried out the execution of the Ittihadist Turks. Instead, for political and economic reasons, the Allies allowed these war criminals to live in comfort in Europe and to plot for further expansion of their Pan-Turanian goals.
Thus, Arshavir and his comrades of arms were drawn into the long struggle against the Turkish establishment. This struggle was peopled with honorable, traitorous, or hesitant Armenians, but most of all with brave, uncompromising Armenians prepared to risk everything to stop the spread of Turkish infamy.
In these pages, the reader walks with Arshavir through the streets of Constantinople, Rome, and Berlin, facing danger and joy, disappointment, and success. The reader meets the ever-courageous Arshavir Papazian, the deceitful M., the inmates of Medekh Prison, the resolute but physically exhausted Aram Yerganian and, above all, the persistent Shiragian.
