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Throughline

Operation Nemesis

Throughline

NPR

Society & Culture, History, Documentary

4.715K Ratings

🗓️ 6 May 2021

⏱️ 53 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

An estimated 1.5 million Armenian Christians were killed by the Ottoman government during World War I, in what came to be known as the Armenian Genocide. The perpetrators escaped Constantinople in the middle of the night and began new lives undercover in Europe. So, a small group of Armenian survivors decided to take justice into their own hands. In this episode from Kerning Cultures, the secretive operation to avenge the Armenian Genocide, and how it changed the idea of justice in the modern world. This story originally aired on Kerning Cultures, a podcast telling stories from across the Middle East and North Africa and the spaces in between.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hey, run here.

0:01.2

And Ramteen.

0:02.2

I know about what you're about to hear.

0:04.3

This episode contains graphic descriptions of violence.

0:08.0

If kids are listening or you'd rather not hear that,

0:10.8

I'd suggest skipping this one.

0:12.6

Here's reporters Alex A. Tech and Hebuff Fisher.

0:16.3

Our story begins on the last day of Talat Pasha's life,

0:20.0

on an ordinary road in the center of Berlin.

0:22.9

He'd been living in an apartment here,

0:24.5

number four, Hagenberg Strasse, for some years now.

0:27.1

And he'd grown comfortable in his routine.

0:29.5

Every day at about 11 o'clock, he'd walk the few blocks into town to a tobacco shop.

0:34.7

And that's what he was doing on the morning that we're talking about, March 15th, 1921.

0:39.1

But what he didn't know that morning is that he was being watched.

0:42.4

As Talat stepped out of his front door, he was wearing a striped shirt and leaning on a walking stick.

0:48.8

In the old days, he was known for his kind of trademark thick mustache,

0:52.4

kind of like a walrus, but he shaved it off a few years back as a precaution.

0:56.4

In case anyone recognized him.

0:59.4

As he walked through the doorway that listed his apartment number next to a fake name,

1:03.4

a young Armenian man called Sockermontet Larian was waiting for him,

1:06.8

looking down at the street from the window of an apartment on the other side of the road.

...

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