ARMENIAN GENOCIDE MARKED.

Byline: Jennifer Hamm Staff Writer

GLENDALE - The deaths of hundreds of thousands of Armenians 85 years ago were commemorated Monday with a program at Glendale High School.

An hourlong assembly was highlighted by performances of traditional music and dance by the students. State Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Pasadena, spoke at the morning event and read eyewitness accounts of the killings that started in 1915.

``For high school students, 1915 seems like eons ago,'' Schiff said later. ``Those times are very difficult to recall or imagine.''

According to the principal, about 40 percent of the student body at Glendale High is of Armenian descent, mirroring the Glendale-Burbank-Pasadena area,

which has the largest concentration of people of Armenian descent outside Armenia.

Most of those students attended ceremonies elsewhere, but the assembly provided a lesson for students of all backgrounds.

Schiff was impressed by the student-organized event, saying it reveals how young people show a genuine interest in an event that predates them by decades.

The event commemorates the violence that began on April 24, 1915, when Turkish soldiers killed 235 Armenian intellectuals and political leaders, accusing them of helping the invading Russians during World War I. Armenia was then part of Ottoman Turkey.

The Turks then began deporting Armenians living in eastern Turkey to Syria. Turkey says 300,000 Armenians died during the deportation but rejects accusations of genocide, saying they were killed during civil war. Other estimates place the death toll at 1.5 million.

``Unfortunately, the Armenian genocide is not recognized by all governments in the United Nations,'' said Assemblyman Jack Scott, noting Gov. Gray Davis proclaimed Monday a day of remembrance for the Armenian victims.

``We in California are taking a stand in recognizing the genocide, and I think it is very important that the federal government now publicly acknowledge what happened,'' Scott added.

The Armenian genocide was added to 10th-grade world history curriculum in 1985. Last year, it was added to required content standards for teaching World War I history.

In Yerevan, Armenia, throngs of people moved along several streets and gathered around a monument to the killings, which lasted from 1915 to 1923. Churches throughout the country held memorial masses, and the youth branch of a nationalist party burned a Turkish flag Sunday night on the eve of the memorial.

- The Associated Press contributed to this story.

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Photo: Students Tatevik Safaryan, Inga Amirian and Vardui Grigoryan perform a traditional dance at Glendale High School on Monday.

John McCoy/Staff Photographer