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Armenian Heritage and History Month and Genocide Remembrance

Armenian Heritage and History Month

About the Armenian Heritage and History Month

Around 1.2 million Armenians live in the United States, mainly in Northern California, Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago, Metro Detroit and Philadelphia. To celebrate the rich cultural heritage, history, the diverse migration stories, and the societal contributions of American-Armenians, April is recognized as the Armenian Heritage and History month. April is also the Armenian Genocide Remembrance Month during which 1.5 million innocent Armenians were massacred by Turkey's Ottoman Empire in 1915 to 1918. 

According to Britannica:

Armenian, member of a people with an ancient culture who originally lived in the region known as Armenia, which comprised what are now northeastern Turkey and the Republic of Armenia. Although some remain in Turkey, more than three million Armenians live in the republic; large numbers also live in Georgia as well as other areas of the Caucasus and the Middle East. A large number lived in Azerbaijan until the late 1980s, when most Armenians fled the country because of ethnic violence and the conflict over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region; other than a sizeable population in the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave, few Armenians remain in Azerbaijan. Many other Armenians migrated to Europe and North America.

The Armenians are the descendants of a branch of the Indo-Europeans. The ancient Greek historians Herodotus and Eudoxus of Rhodes related the Armenians to the Phrygians—who entered Asia Minor from Thrace—and to the peoples of the ancient kingdom upon whom the Phrygians imposed their rule and language. Known to the Persians as Armina and to the Greeks as Armenioi, the Armenian people call themselves Hayq (singular: Hay) and their country Hayastan, and they look back to a folk hero, Hayk. For more information visit the Britannica page here.

According to Wikipedia:

Armenian Americans (Armenian: ամերիկահայեր, romanizedamerikahayer) are citizens or residents of the United States who have total or partial Armenian ancestry. They form the second largest community of the Armenian diaspora after Armenians in Russia.[3] The first major wave of Armenian immigration to the United States took place in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Thousands of Armenians settled in the United States following the Hamidian massacres of the mid-1890s, the Adana massacre of 1909, and the Armenian genocide of 1915–1918 in the Ottoman Empire. Since the 1950s many Armenians from the Middle East (especially from LebanonSyriaIranIraqEgypt, and Turkey) migrated to the United States as a result of political instability in the region. It accelerated in the late 1980s and has continued after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 due to socio-economic and political reasons. The Los Angeles area has the largest Armenian population in the United States. For more information visit the Wikipedia page here.

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