Garegin Pastermajian - Armen Garo
27 March , 2019
Born in Garin (Erzurum), Armen Garo graduated from the Sanasarian School there and attended the School of Agronomy in Nancy, France, in 1894.
Strongly attracted to the Armenian revolutionary movement, with a few friends he went to Geneva (Droshak) in 1895 to join the ARF. Soon thereafter he was sent to Egypt, Cyprus, then Constantinople, where he played a leading role in the seizure of the Ottoman Bank on August 14, 1896.
He and Hrach Tiryakian led negotiations with European ambassadors to end the Armenian massacres unleashed by the Sultan and to ensure the safe passage of the Armenian revolutionaries who had captured the Ottoman Bank.
He returned to Switzerland and resumed his studies, graduating in 1900 with a PhD in chemistry. In 1898, the Second World Congress of the ARF elected him a member of its Western Bureau.
In 1901 he settled in Tiflis. There, he led the defense of the mostly Armenian-populated city during the Armeno-Tatar (Azeri) confrontations of 1905–1906.
After the proclamation of the Ottoman Constitution in 1908, Armen Garo was elected a member of the Ottoman Parliament in 1909. He settled in Constantinople, then Garin.
In the autumn of 1914, he returned to the Caucasus. There, he played an important role in organizing the Armenian Volunteer Movement as General Dro’s associate and was appointed deputy commander of the Second Regiment.
After the independence of Armenia in 1918, he was appointed a member of the Armenian National Delegation at the Paris peace talks, and then ambassador of the Armenian Republic in Washington, DC, from 1919 to 1921.
He played a leading role in the planning and implementation of the ARF’s Operation Nemesis, the plan to assassinate Turkish leaders responsible for the Armenian Genocide. He died in Geneva in March, 1923. He was 51 years old.