The story is verified by the 100 LIVES Research Team.
https://auroraprize.com/hy/stories/detail/regular/102/aurora-mardiganian
#AURORAPRIZE #CEREMONY #NOWINARMENIA #FORAWAKENINGHUMANITY
https://auroraprize.com/en/aurora/detail/9087/aurora-prize-inaugural-ceremony-stream

April1915
https://youtu.be/szd0moC3xIg
Story about Aurora Mardiganian.
She is known as Armenian’s Jann’d’Arc – a woman who lived through uncountable hrrors of the Genocide and then heroically relived then in a book and film of her life that told the world the truth.
Aurora Mardiganyan was born Arshaluys Martikanian in 1901, the third of eight children to prosperous farmer and silk manufacturer in the town of Chmshkatsag in the Dersim province(western Armenia), which is now the Tinceli Province in modern day Turkey. She died aged 92 in California care home after a life marked ana marred by the early loss and cruelty she endured, but also by a resilient desire to help pthers.
Arshalys was apromising student and budding violinist, with sister engaged to be married and a brother already living in America, when the terrible events of 1915 started to unfold. She saw her father and a brother killed and was forces, with her mother and sister, to join the mass deportation of Armenian women to the deserts of Syria.
Arshaluys was sold for the equivalent of 85U.S. cents to the harem of a tribal leader.
She escaped, was recaptured by slaves traders and escape again. After an 18 mounth trek over the Dersim Mountains hiding in caves and woods, living off vegetation and roots, she arrived barefoot, half-nacked and starving in Russian-ocuppied Erzrum, where she was cared for by merican missionaries.
The generosity of spirit that enabled her to care, in turn, for hundreds of orphans redeemed from Muslim homes is to be remembered in prize as part of the 100LIVES initiative.
Adopted by an Armenian family in New York, she took out press advertisements in a bid to find her surviving brother Vahan who had moved to the USA before massacres.
These attached the attention of journalists. Arshalus’ account if the Genocide was published in newspapers in New York and Los Angeles in late 1918, and released as a book, “Ravished Armenia”, in December that year. She was featured on the cover in traditional Armenian dress. The book would be reprinted many times over the next two decades, selling an estimated 900,000 copies indluding editions in Spanish, Dutch and Polish.
Before 1918 was out, a silent of the book was in preparation by Selig Polyscope Company, directed by Oscar Apfel, And with Arshaluys, now renamed Aurora Mardiganian to protect her identity, playing the lead role.
Ravished Armenia /known as “Auction of Souls” in some territories/ was first shown in Washington in January 1919 and had a huge society premiere at New York’s Plaza Hotel in February 1919.
Translate to English Show original