Lou Ureneck\’s “The Great Fire” at Ararat-Eskijian Museum

MISSION HILLS — Ararat-Eskijian Museum, National Association for Armenian Studies and research, Present an illustrated talk by Lou Ureneck “The Great Fire”, June 5th, 2015 at 7 PM, Ararat-Eskijian Museum/Sheen Chapel, 15105 Mission Hills Road, Mission Hills CA 91345

In “The Great Fire” the author Lou Ureneck presents the forgotten true story of an American rescue.
In September 1922, the richest city of the Mediterranean was burned, and countless numbers of Christian refugees killed. The city was Smyrna, and the event was the final episode of the 20th Century’s first genocide — the slaughter of three million Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians of the Ottoman Empire.

The slaughter at Smyrna occurred as warships of the great powers stood by — the United States, Great Britain, France and Italy. The deaths of hundreds of thousands seemed inevitable until an American minister staged a bold rescue with the help of a courageous U.S. naval officer.
Now, the forgotten story of one of the great humanitarian acts of history gets told.

The author Lou Ureneck is a professor at Boston University. A former Nieman fellow at Harvard University, Ureneck is a former deputy managing editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer and editor of the Portland Press Herald. In 2011, Ureneck was a Fulbright fellow at the National University in Kiev, where he taught business and economics journalism.
? Admission free (Donations appreciated) ? Reception and book signing following the program. For more information call the Ararat-Eskijian Museum at (747-500-7585 or e-mail:ararat-eskijian-museum@netzero.net