Aurora Mardiganian

Aurora Mardiganian (; January 12, 1901 – February 6, 1994) was an Armenian-American author, actress, and a survivor of the Armenian genocide. Arriving in America as a teenager, she co-wrote a 1918 book about her experience, Ravished Armenia, and played the title role in a 1919 silent movie based on the book, titled Auction of Souls or Ravished Armenia. Most of the film is now lost. An animated documentary about her life, titled Aurora's Sunrise, was released in 2022.

Biography Born as Arshaluys Mardigian, she was the daughter of a prosperous Armenian family living in Chmshgatsak (Çemişgezek), in the Ottoman Empire's province of Mamuret-ül Aziz.

During the Armenian genocide in 1915, she witnessed the deaths of her family members and was forced to march over , during which she was kidnapped and sold into the slave markets of Anatolia. Mardiganian escaped from a harem; with the help of Near East Relief she traveled to Tiflis (modern Tbilisi, Georgia), then to St. Petersburg, to Kristiania (modern Oslo, Norway) and finally to New York City, where she arrived in 1917.

In New York, she was approached by Harvey Gates, a young screenwriter, who became her guardian and helped her write and publish a narrative that is often described as a memoir, titled Ravished Armenia (full title Ravished Armenia; the Story of Aurora Mardiganian, the Christian Girl, Who Survived the Great Massacres). It was published in 1918. To accommodate American audiences, her name was changed to Aurora Mardiganian.

The book was used for writing a script for a silent film. The film was produced in 1919, Mardiganian playing herself, and was first screened in London as Auction of Souls. The first New York performance of the film, then titled Ravished Armenia, took place on February 16, 1919, in the ballroom of the Plaza Hotel, with society leaders, Mrs. Oliver Harriman and Mrs. George W. Vanderbilt, serving as co-hostesses on behalf of the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief (which was then the name of Near East Relief).

She died on February 6, 1994, aged 93. She lived long enough to see that Armenia had declared independence from the Soviet Union three years earlier.

Legacy The Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity has been awarded annually since 2016; it is named in honor of Aurora Mardiganian.

The animated documentary film Aurora's Sunrise about her life premiered in June 2022. It also includes scenes of the film Auction of Souls and it was Armenia's entry to the Academy Awards for 2023.

A statue commemorating Aurora Mardiganian and the martyrs of the Armenian genocide was unveiled in Yerevan on September 30, 2024.