The Cross and the Crescent

The Cross and The Crescent is a remarkably compelling documentation of the murder of 1.5 million men, women and children - civilians - by the Turks in 1915. Avakian, whose own parents had escaped earlier pogroms engineered by the Ottoman Turks, pulls no punches in this highly detailed account that reveals the facts about what he refers to as "the carefully forgotten" first genocide of the 20th Century. The historic events chronicled in The Cross and The Crescent unfold as seen through the impassioned eyes of Soghomon Tehlirian, the Armenian patriot who executed the fugitive war criminal Talaat Pasha on a Berlin sidewalk in 1921. Talaat had become Prime Minister of Turkey, largely as a reward for his success in having sent 80 percent of the Armenian population to early graves. "The events during the trial of Soghomon Tehlirian in Berlin are so powerfully related," according to one reviewer, "that Lindy V. Avakian merits consideration as a nonfiction writer of extraordinary talent." Another book reviewer commented "you are about to read one of the most powerfully compelling Holocaust documents ever written." It was the trial of Soghomon Tehlirian that gave Germany the distinction of being the first country to allow the crime of genocide to be contested in a high court of law. Circumstances surrounding the 1921 trial were compounded by the fact that Germany and Turkey had been allies during World War I; however, by the time the trial had ended, Soghomon Tehlirian, the Executioner, was declared innocent and considered an international hero by freedom-loving people throughout the world. He had acted legally under international law which authorized anyone to seek out an punish a fugitive war criminal, one guilty of crimes against humanity. A significant irony documented in The Cross and The Crescent is that the Government of Turkey has never officially acknowledged that they ever took place. On the other hand, much to their credit, the modern Germans have long since denounced Hitler and confessed their guilt involving the genocide of European Jewry. (Note: special copy is part of the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem.)