Book on Operation Nemesis Telling the Story to Broad German and Austrian Audiences Now Available in Armenian

Several factors motivated her to write this book. When she was living in France, where there is a large Armenian community, she had the opportunity to make Armenian friends with whom she had many discussions. She said, “I was made very much aware of how few people knew in Germany and Austria about the Armenian Genocide and how many misconceptions there were concerning it. I tried to understand why that was the case.”

On the one hand, Germany and Austria were allied with the Ottoman Empire in this period and their archives are full of reports of what was taking place. However, there is a countervailing factor. She said, “I think part of it is due to the fact that we have very big Turkish communities in these countries which started to come in the 1960s to work, and even the second and third generations [of immigrants] have this incredible thing about the ‘Armenian lies.’ I found presentations of schoolkids who were born in Austria or Germany, who live there, and who present at their school. When they do the usual presentations, they do presentations on the ‘big Armenian lie,’ and things like this. This is one thing that really motivated me. I wanted Austrians and Germans to understand the Armenian Genocide.”

Another factor was that early in her career, she was confronted with the breakup of the former Yugoslavia and the ensuing Kosovo genocide, as well as the concurrent Rwandan genocide in Africa. She said, “For me the big thing was always, how can you get justice after such an event. How can you arrange it so that … perpetrators don’t get away with this kind of enormous crime against humanity?”

When she began to dedicate herself more to writing, she thought she therefore wanted to do a book about the Armenian Genocide, but, she said, “I didn’t want to add another academic book. I wanted to make it accessible to people who were not academic. When I came across this Nemesis story, I knew that this would provide a possibility to tell the story in a way that would also be interesting to people who are not at all into this topic.”

While not working as an academician, nevertheless she sought out as many sources as possible, including biased ones, in order to give the full picture. She said, “When I started to get into the story of Nemesis, my impression was that it is not one story. It is several stories. There is the one told by the ARF [Armenian Revolutionary Federation, the party that initially organized the operation], which of course has a certain bias. There are the other ones told by those who did their autobiographies, particularly the Nemesis members who lived in the US, because they had a chance to do so. The other ones that stayed in Armenia didn’t have a chance to do so.”

She went to the Mkhitarist library in Vienna and the Austrian archives, and used Austrian, German and French old newspapers of the time. She sought out descendants of Nemesis members, not only in the US but in Yerevan. She said she lucked out when she was doing research in Yerevan at various institutions and libraries, including the Genocide Museum-Institute, because she was present at the inauguration of a memorial to Nemesis two years ago in April, and there met some of the descendants’ families. She said they were very helpful, including the Gevorgyan and Yerganian families. In fact, Armen Gevorgyan later did the fundraising for the Armenian translation of her book.