October 20, 2021
Eliza: a Memoir of Love and Resistance book cover

Marian Mesrobian MacCurdy compiled materials and contributed to the introduction to Eliza: a Memoir of Love and Resistance, published by the Gomidas Institute in Great Britain.  The book is a memoir written by MacCurdy’s grandmother, Eliza Der Melkonian Sachaklian, a survivor of the Hamidian massacres of the Armenians in 1894-94 and the Adana massacres of 1909.

About the book:

Eliza was born in the Ottoman Empire to a family of merchants and parish priests. They lost their ancestral home in Aintab during the Hamidian Massacres of 1895-96 and resist the Turkish mobs at the siege of Dortyol during the Adana massacres of 1909. These life-and-death struggles began the family's lifelong affiliation with the Armenian Revolutionary Federation. After her marriage to Aharon Sachaklian, who had become a naturalized American citizen, Eliza and her husband left their families in Cilicia and emigrated to the United States where they raised their three children and became active participants in Armenian community affairs. After World War I Aharon became the finance and logistics officer for Operation Nemesis, a secret campaign to assassinate the Turkish leaders responsible for the Armenian Genocide of 1915. If Eliza knew of his involvement she never let on. This work is based on Eliza's original memoir and includes a biography of Aharon Sachalkian. It was prepared for publication by her daughter and grand-daughter, Arpena Sachaklian Mesrobian and Marian Mesrobian MacCurdy.