Aurora Mardiganian
June is “Immigrant Heritage Month.” Throughout the month we will be posting materials relating to immigration and immigrant cultures of NYC.
One hundred years ago today … Aurora Mardiganian, Armenian American actor, a onetime refugee from the Armenian genocide perpetrated by Turkey, successfully sued her former legal guardian for $800. She fainted in court when she heard the news.
Aurora Mardiganian. Wikicommons.
The News had the scoop, using a plausible variation of Mardiganian’s legal first name, (Arshaluys), but badly misspelling her family name.
When granted $75 outright and $15 weekly from $800 to her credit in a bank by Surrogate Foley yesterday, Miss Arshaloues Mardigian [sic], Armenian refugee and motion picture actress, fainted. She was taken to Volunteer Hospital.
Miss Mardigian [sic] sued for an accounting by Mrs. Eleanor B. Gates, her guardian.
(“Girl Faints as Court Awards Her Income,” Daily News, 21 June 1921, p. 22)
Mardiganian was born 1901 to an Armenian family in the city of Tchemesh-Gedzak, the Ottoman Empire (Zemeckis). At age 14 she was kidnapped by the Turkish military and became a victim of sex trafficking. Over the next several years she was trafficked repeatedly, but also managed to escape her captors several times, all while witnessing the genocide and seeing her family members die. At the end of World War I, she found refuge with Canadian armed forces and immigrated to the US as a refugee.
Mardiganian published her autobiography Ravished Armenia: The Story of Aurora Mardiganian, the Christian Girl, Who Survived the Great Massacres in 1918. It was adapted for the 1919 movie Ravished Armenia, sometimes called Auction of Souls; Mardiganian played herself.
The film was still showing occasionally in 1921.
Dunkirk Evening Observer, 14 February 1921, p.8. Newspapers.com
Only a fraction of the film survives. Mardiganian herself did not continue as a professional actor. (Zemeckis)
Note: We previously wrote about Armenian immigration for our June 4, 1921 post.
References/ Further reading:
Zemeckis, Leslie. “A Woman You Should Know — Aurora Mardiganian.” 22 October 2019. Medium.
– Jonathan Goldman, June 21, 2021
TAGS: refugees, immigration, human trafficking, women’s history, cinema, movies, film, acting