Armenian Martyrs' Day

"If evil of this magnitude can be ignored, if our own children forget, then we deserve oblivion and earn the world's scorn."

Avedis Aharonian (writer and educator, 1866-1948), English translation by Diana Der-Hovanessian

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Armenian Genocide Commemoration
Tuesday, April 24th, San Francisco CA

5:00 pm - Rally at San Francisco Civic Center, across from City Hall

7:00 pm - Commemoration Program, Herbst Theater, in the Veterans Building, 401 Van Ness Avenue at McAllister, S.F.
The 70 piece Oakland Youth Orchestra will perform Gomidas, Khatcaturian and other Armenian works. This evening will be dedicated to victims of the current genocide in Darfur, Sudan. There will be also be a special dedication to the memory of the recently assassinated Armenian journalist Hrant Dink. Donations may be made at the door.

The Mt. Davidson Cross will be lit on April 24th

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"I should like to see any power of the world destroy this race, this small tribe of unimportant people, whose history is ended, whose wars have all been fought and lost, whose structures have crumbled, whose literature is unread, whose music is unheard, whose prayers are no longer uttered. Go ahead, destroy this race. Let us say that it is again 1915. There is war in the world. Destroy Armenia. See if you can do it. Send them from their homes into the desert. Let them have neither bread nor water. Burn their houses and their churches. See if the race will not live again when two of them meet in a beer parlor, twenty years after, and laugh, and speak in their tongue. Go ahead, see if you can do anything about it. See if you can stop them from mocking the big ideas of the world, you sons of bitches, a couple of Armenians talking in the world, go ahead and try to destroy them....for when two of them meet anywhere in the world, see if they will not create a new Armenia!"

William Saroyan "The Armenian and the Armenian"