Every year, April 24 is celebrated in Armenia and the diaspora as the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Armenian Genocide.
In 1915, Ottoman Turkey began mass exterminations of Armenians, which lasted for several years. The Armenian genocide was organized by Turkish rulers with the support of Imperial Germany and with the connivance of Western countries.
Professing the ideas of regressive pan-Turkism and pan-Islamism, the Turkish authorities sought not only to preserve the Ottoman Empire and forcibly destroy or assimilate the subject population, but also to create an all-Turanian empire that would include all Muslims.
In 1894-1896, the destruction of more than 300 thousand Armenians was organized in Turkey. In 1909, 30 thousand Armenians were killed in Adana and its environs.
On April 24, 1915, the first group of Armenian intelligentsia was arrested in the Ottoman Empire. Numerous arrests followed. In a short period, the number of those arrested reached about 800 people, including writers, scientists, art historians, teachers, actors, doctors, priests, public figures, as well as Armenian deputies of the Turkish Majlis (parliament). They were all driven to Anatolia and brutally killed.
As a result of the 1915 genocide, about one and a half million Armenians were exterminated, and the entire Armenian population of Western Armenia was deported from their lands.
April 24 became a day of remembrance for innocent victims and is celebrated every year in both Armenia and the diaspora. In 2015, the European Parliament declared April 24 as the European Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire, and since 2019 it has been the national day of remembrance for the victims of the Armenian genocide in France.
Construction of a memorial to innocent victims began on Tsitsernakaberd Hill in Yerevan in 1965. The complex was completed in 1967 and became a sacred place for Armenians.
In 1995, a genocide museum (architects Kalashyan and Mkrtchyan) dedicated to these terrible events was opened at the other end of the park. The museum displays some photographs taken by German photographers (including Armin Wegner), as well as their publications. Not far from the museum there is an alley where foreign statesmen plant trees in memory of the victims of genocide.
Every year on April 24, the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Armenian Genocide, hundreds of thousands of people climb the hill to the memorial complex and lay flowers (usually carnations and tulips) at the eternal flame. Thanks to the efforts of Armenian diasporas, many monuments to victims of the genocide have been built around the world.