Aurora Mardiganian

A film poster for the film Auction of Souls , 1919

Aurora Mardiganian ( Armenian Առորա Մարտիկանեան ), born as Arshaluys Mardigian ) ( Armenian Արշալոյս Մարտիկանեան (born January 12, 1901 in Çemişgezek , Mamüretül Aziz , Ottoman Empire ; † February 6, 1994 in Los Angeles , California ) was an Armenian-American writer , Actress and survivor of the Armenian genocide .

Life

Aurora Mardiganian came from a wealthy Armenian family from Çemişgezek , twenty miles north of Harput . At the age of 14 she graduated from the Mesropyan School and wanted to transfer to the American college in Merzifon , formerly Marsovan, when the genocide of the Armenians began at Easter 1915 . She witnessed the murder of her father and brother and was then forced to go on a death march of over 1,400 miles, during which she lost the rest of her family (mother, five siblings, and two aunts). She was also robbed and sold three times on the route, but managed to escape again and again. Among other things, she wandered through the steppes of the Dersim province for a year while fleeing and worked for Kurdish farmers. In the spring of 1917 she discovered refugee convoys of the Turks expelled from the Balkan countries, reached Erzindjan, today Erzincan , and finally Erzurum , which the Russian troops had conquered a year earlier. There she came into contact with General Andranik Ozanian , with representatives of the Russian armed forces and also with the Canadian doctor and missionary Frederick MacCallum and Professor Luleiyan. Together with the latter two, she looked after orphans and Armenian women in need from February to September 1917 and researched their own origins. In October 1917, with the support of the Russians and Americans, she was able to flee to Tbilisi (now Georgia ) and then via Saint Petersburg to Oslo , from where she finally traveled to New York City with the help of the American Near East Foundation on board the ocean liner Oskar II . She arrived there on November 5, 1917, was taken in by an American-Armenian family and initially worked in a factory.

The Aurora Prize for Promoting Humanity is named after Mardiganian .

Ravished Armenia / Auction of Souls

In New York she also met the young journalist and screenwriter Harvey Leyford Gates. Aurora came to his attention through newspaper ads looking for her eldest brother, Vahan, who had gone to America years earlier. Gates helped her write and publish her memoirs under the name Ravished Armenia (German: "Robbed Armenia"; full title in English: Ravished Armenia; the Story of Aurora Mardiganian, the Christian Girl, Who Survived the Great Massacres , 1918). Gates' wife, writer Eleanor Brown Gates, soon became Aurora's legal guardian.

The book, which soon became a bestseller, served as the basis for a script. In the eight-part silent film by director and actor Oscar Apfel , which was produced under the title Auction of Souls from November 1918 to January 1919 and premiered in London , Aurora Mardiganian plays herself. She became a celebrated star, traveled to numerous premieres and matinee performances until she passed out from exhaustion during a soiree in Buffalo in 1920 . Thereupon seven young women appeared alternately as Aurora's double.

Aurora herself was sent to a convent school with boarding school against her will, where a suicide attempt was made. Back in New York, she successfully sued for her film fee, only a small part of which had previously been paid to her. She declined further film engagements, and only gave six interviews again between 1984 and 1988. Your film had meanwhile disappeared from the schedules due to state censorship in England and soon also in the USA.

Mardiganian has been referred to in the press as the Armenian Maid of Orleans for drawing attention to the atrocities committed against Christians in Turkey. On December 7, 1929, Mardiganian married an immigrant from Armenia, Martin Hovanian. They lived together in the Bronx, where their son Michael Sedal was born in 1931. From then on she devoted herself entirely to her family and a small group of relatives and friends. During World War II, Mardiganian became involved in the Red Cross. In 1978 her husband died and she had no contact with her son either. She moved to Van Nuys , New York City, and lived very secluded there until she was finally taken to the Ararat Home nursing home in Mission Hills on January 3, 1994. A short time later, Aurora Mardiganian died on February 6, 1994 in Holy Cross Hospital. Her ashes were buried in a group grave in the city's County Cemetary, to which a small metal plaque with her name was subsequently attached.

Surname

When it comes to Aurora Mardiganian, naming confusion occurs again and again. The reason for this is that it is only a pseudonym. In 1918 in New York she was urgently advised to use this and to refrain from her original name Arshaluys Mardigian due to the possible danger to surviving family members in Turkey.

literature

• Peter Balakian : The Burning Tigris. The Armenian Genocide and America's Response . HarperCollins, New York 2003.
• Eugene L. Taylor, Abraham T. Krikorian: 'Ravished Armenia. Revisited: 'Some Additions to a' A Brief Assessment of the Ravished Armenia Marquee Poster ' Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies , 19: 2 (2010), pp. 179-215.
• Arshaluys Mardigian, Walburga Elisabeth Seul, Tessa Hofmann: ... let my soul die so that my body can continue to live. A contemporary witness report of the Armenian genocide in 1915/16 . to Klampen Verlag, Springe 2020.

Web links

Commons : Aurora Mardiganian  - Collection of Images

• Aurora Mardiganian in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Ravished Armenia
• Ravished Armenia

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Peter Balakian . The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America's Response . HarperCollins, New York 2003, pp. 313-14.