Jerry Lewis: “today I would like to bring to your attention the grave injustices suffered by the Armenian people at the hands of the…”

“today I would like to bring to your attention the grave injustices suffered by the Armenian people at the hands of the Ottoman Turkish Empire earlier this century. On April 24, 1994 at the Armenian Genocide Monument located in Montebello's Bicknell Park, we will commemorate the 79th anniversary of the Armenian genocide in a ceremony honoring the victims of this tragedy. Indeed, the second half of the 19th century proved to be a dark period in Armenian history when the rise of their national consciousness was met with increasingly harsh rule by the Ottoman Turkish Government. The systematic elimination of the Armenians began in 1894 evidenced by the deaths of close to 200,000 Armenians over a 2- year period. Over the next three decades, the Armenian people were methodically uprooted from their homeland, tortured, starved, and killed. April 24, 1915 marked the beginning of the infamous 1915 genocide when hundreds of Armenian religious, political, and intellectual leaders were rounded up, exiled, and eventually murdered.”