Contested Memories, Divided Diaspora: Armenian Americans, the Thousand-day Republic, and the Polarized Response to an Archbishop's Murder

BEN ALEXANDER

ON DECEMBER 24, 1933, at the Holy Cross Armenian Apostolic Church (which still stands and functions today) in the Washington Heights section of New York City, Archbishop Levon Tourian, elected primate of the Eastern Diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church of America, marched in solemn procession, opening the morning's service of Divine Liturgy over which he was to officiate. As the procession made its way down the center aisle, a group of men suddenly jumped up from the pews, surrounded Archbishop Tourian, and stabbed him to death with a large butcher knife. The room instantly broke into pandemonium. Parishioners began beating up some of the apparent assassins, while others among them fled. The police arrived shortly and arrested two men; by the end of the week they had a total of nine in custody. The suspects all belonged to a political organization known as the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, or Tashnag party (alternatively transliterated as Dashnag and Dashnak). They stood trial and were convicted early that summer. Throughout this saga, Armenians followed every development of the proceedings with great interest and with intense convictions as to the rightful outcome. But these convictions divided them sharply, for throughout the whole affair—and then for decades to follow—one set of Armenians considered the nine Tashnag suspects, and by extension the Tashnag party at large, unequivocally guilty of the crime. The opposing camp believed with equal fervor in the innocence of the nine. They also, and perhaps with even greater fervor, regarded Archbishop Tourian as a traitor to his nation.