ITAR-TASS News Agency
TASS
April 24, 2005 Sunday
Crimea commemorating Armenian genocide victims
By Lev Ryabchikov
SIMFEROPOL
The Crimea is commemorating Armenian genocide victims.
A service for genocide victims was ministered in the St. Akop Church
in Simferopol on Sunday.
Armenian historians told a mourning rally that large-scale killings
of Armenians began in West Armenia in April 1915 by a classified
instruction of the Turkish government. They remembered with gratitude
Russian Emperor Nicholas II, who ordered to open the Russian-Turkish
border for 375,000 Armenian refugees. Some of them found refuge in
the Crimea, where many Armenians lived at that time.
11,000 Armenians were deported from the Crimea in 1944 together with
Crimean Tatars, Bulgarians and Greeks. Nowadays the Armenian
community of the Crimea has 9,000 members.