A Day Spent in Yerevan
There was still a lot to see in Yerevan before the trip ended. First up was the Matenadoran, one of Armenia's most historic museums, filled with thousands of manuscripts, fragments of books, ancients records and documents in Georgian, Greek, Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Hebrew and Latin.
And a visit to the Armenian Genocide Memorial and Museum. Pre-World War I, the Armenians and Turks had lived together in relative harmony, but the War gave Turkish extremists dictatorial control. It was they who masterminded the plan to eradicate the Armenian race to fulfill their dreams of a new Pan-Turkic empire. '...able-bodied men were then "drafted" to help in the wartime effort. These men were either immediately killed or were worked to death. Now the villages and towns, with only women, children, and elderly left were systematically emptied.' The Armenians were led on death marches across Anatolia - raped, starved, murdered and kidnapped.
