The Most Pathetic Ambassadress in History
Astonishing Story of Aurora Mardiganian, Who Comes to America to Plead for a Tortured People, and How the Most Thrilling of Screen Plays is to Help a Great American Movement Toward Practical Rescue
By Ethel Thurston
All the world outside of Turkey has sympathy and it has sympathy and it has varying degrees of wrath for one of the greatest crimes in history–the torture and murder of hundreds of thousands of Armenians–yet the tragedy itself has remained remote.
To bring neared a sense of its horrors, to arouse not merely indignation but active sympathy, a girl came to America, a personification of the helpless beauty and innocence upon which the brutal Turk has been inflicting the most terrible indignities, outrage and suffering anywhere recorded in human annals.
Her name is Aurora Mardiganian. She is one of the Christian girls who survived the massacres of the Armenians.
Surely she is the most pathetic ambassadress in history.
This girl of 17, who pleads for a martyred people, will not go away empty handed. A great movement has been organized. Its benevolent activities will over America. No “drive” ever more thrillingly touched the heart strings and the purse strings of a nation.
Behind the American committee for Armenian and Syrian relief which is conducting a nationwide movement to raise a great fund are the names of former President Taft, former Ambassador to Turkey Morgenthau, Charles E. Hughes, Cardinal Gibbons, Bishop Greer, Rabbi Wise, Cleveland H. Dodge and many other prominent Americans. James L. Barton is chairman. The committee and its helpers are working in fully realization of the stupendous calamity, which has occasioned its labors and the dead danger that lurks in the situation it seeks to meet.
A new and startling method of conveying the message of Aurora Mardiganian has been taken by the committee.
A Great Screen Spectacle
Aurora’s story, and that of the Armenian massacres and deportations which she witnessed, have been elaborately filmed and the tremendous screen spectacle will soon be presented in the leading cities of this country.
It is the complete story of “Ravished Armenia.”
Linking the scenes of the stupendous dramatization of a national tragedy is the personal narrative of the girl upon whose slender shoulders has been thrust the tremendous responsibility of saving millions of her people from starvation and death.
Aurora Mardiganian lived through three years of Turkish enslavement–and suffered as few women in the history of the world have ever suffered. Death confronted her time and again–and in a dozen different forms. Only a miracle could save her. And yet each time that miracle was wrought. It seems as if some higher power had destined her to live so that she might come to America and make her markable appeal for help for the people of her race.
Aurora Mardiganian, the only woman who ever escaped from the clutches of the turks, came to this country not for the clutches of the Turks, came to this country not for the selfish purpose of escaping further torture. Her visit was a mission–perhaps the most responsible a woman ever was asked to represent. This frail, delicate girl of 17, came as the unofficial ambassadress of 4,000,000 people with this pathetic message:
“Armenia needs your help as never before in all its tragic history.”
And then Aurora Mardiganian told the story of her life–and the story of Armenia: the nation that knows no capital; that knows no flag; that the pitiless plight of Armenian refugees lost in the trackless wastes of the Syrian desert–all has been chronicled in the newspapers of this country.
Aurora Maridganian’s Own Story
When the final chapter of the pitifully frank story of this beautiful little Christian girl has been penned, thousands of Americans, awakened to the plight of Armenia, insisted:
“Aurora Mardiganian’s story should not die; it is one that should live and be told in pictures.”
The demands has been answered with “Ravished Armenia: The Story of Aurora Mardiganian”–a masterpiece in film production. It is a photoplay that abounds with dramatic situations; that pictures the Turks as they never before have been pictured; that re-acts their murderous deeds; that shows harem scenes scenes that Aurora Mardiganian saw with her own eyes; that shows slave markets where women are sold into slavery for sums frequently far under one dollar.
“Ravished Armenia,” staged under the auspices of the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief, will soon make its appearance in all the principal cities of the United States.
The showing of this marvelous film is in connection with the work of the committee and their attempt to save from starvation the 3,950,000 suffering refugees in the Near East. It will visualize for the people of America the story of the tragic suffering of the people of America the story of the tragic suffering of the people of Armenia during these past years of the war. The first release of the picture will be made in connection with the committee’s drive for $30,000,000, Jan 12 to 19.
“Ravished Armenia” is a film play that was produced by maters in the screen world from a scenario by Nora Waln. The cast includes some of the most famous stars. The staging was perhaps as elaborate as that of any photoplay in the recent years. The story of “Ravished Armenia” is built around the story of Aurora Mardiganian, who plays a part–and plays it wonderfully well, because her role in this play is not acting; it is vividly re-living some of the tragic incidents of her life.
The story of its real opening in the little Armenian town of Techmesh-Gedzak, where urora Mardiganian was born and where she spent the first 14 years of her life in comparative in the little city that had its origin 800 years before the Christian era.
The Belle of the Village
Aurora, a remarkably pretty child, blossomed early into girlhood and, at the age of 14, was regarded as the belle of the village. To every girl such a distinction usually brings happiness and admiration. But to Aurora Mardiganian it brought misfortune and event suffering that almost beggar description.
Passet Pacha, ruler of the Techmesh-Gedzak, saw Aurora Mardiganian one day in 1915–and at once there came to him the desire to add this little Christian girl to his harem. He went to the father of Aurora and made known his base desire. The father, aghast, refused.
“I want your daughter–and I shall have her,” was the parting remark of Passet Pacha.
Just about that time the official Ottoman edict was published which ruled that every Armenian on Turkish soil should be deported. It was an order that every minor Turkish official proceeded to obey with fiendish thoroughness. It meant that there had come to all of these officials governmental sanction to kill all Armenians, loot their homes, ravage their towns and ravish their women.
And to no Turkish official did the edit appeal as a greater source of joy than to Passet Pacha. Ordering his soldiers to seize the father and the older brother of Aurora Mardiganian, this official at once ordered them taken away. The parting of the Mardiganian family forms one of the most pathetic scenes in “Ravished Armenia.” The father and his oldest son ruthlessly were taken from their families–and the parting perhaps is forever. It is more than three years since their incident took place and Aurora has devoted every possible energy in an effort to get trace of her father and older brother.
No sooner had the father of Aurora Mardiganian been whisked away than she, her mother, her older sister and younger brothers were seized and made a part of Passet-Pacha’s band. The Turkish leader and his men, after looting and pillaging Techmesh-Gedzak, murdered the men and many of the boys–and then marched away to loot and to pillage other Armenian cities.
In the Clutches of the Turks
And they took with them Aurora Mardiganian, her mother and sister, and all the other women and girls of the village, who were forced to submit to unspeakable horrors at the hands of Passet-Pacha and his favored lieutenants. The women and the girls who refused were beaten and during that long march many of them died from their wounds. The wholesale deportations of the Armenian people are vividly shown.
The scenes of “Ravished Armenia” then carry the auditor along with Aurora Mardiganian to various Armenian cities where gigantic massacres took place.
Aurora Mardiganian was forced to witness all these inhuman acts and was herself a victim of their cruelty. Her very beauty made her the object of Turkish passions and she was singled out to endure and suffer to the absolute limit of human endurance. For something like a year this frail girl remained a captive and finally, clad only in a few rags, bruised and scarred, pale and wan from the privation that she had endured, was auctioned off for 85 cents.
The scenes of “Ravished Armenia” then carry along the story of the suffering Armenian people and of Aurora Mardiganian to the time when she fell into the hands of Kehmal Effendi, who told her that he would marry her and make her a legitimate wife, if she would renounce the Christian religion and adopt that of Mohammed. For a long time the girl deliberated before answering.
“I cannot decide until I have talked to my mother. Bring her to me and let me talk to her. If she tells me it is all right to renounce the Christian religion I will do so. If she says no, then I shall not renounce it and you can kill me as you threaten.”
The mother and the sister and the brothers of Aurora Mardiganian–with the exception of the older brother–were brought to the little town where Aurora was a captive. The scene that depicts the temporary uniting of this part of the Mardiganian family is one tense with remotion.
When Aurora told her mother the proposition of Kehmal Effendin the mother shrieked her answer:
“No! No! Do not give up your religion!”
The words hardly had come from her mouth when Turkish murderers, acting under orders from Kehmal Effendi beat the mother to death before Aurora’s very eyes. A younger brother of Aurora, witnessing the scene and made hysterical by the horror of it, started to run away. A Turk with a long bull whip swung it at the boy with merciless precision. The huge, sharp lash cracked around the head of the boy and fractured his skull. He tottered–and then fell over dead.
The older sister of Aurora mardiganian incurred the displeasure of the Turks and was thrown over a cliff and impaled on bayonets. That was a form of death-dealing torture which the Turks indulged in when handing “stubborn women”–a bit of fiendishness that seemed to give them extreme pleasure.
A Wanderer in the Desert
“Ravished Armenia” then carries on to the time when Aurora Mardiganian was placed in prison. As sheperd who came along discovered her plight and at the risk of his own life, liberated her. Freed at last, Aurora attempted to escape from Turkey, but where could she go?
The cities were peopled by Turks: they riled in the villages; Turks were everywhere–but in the vast Syrian desert. And into this arid waste this little Christian girl wandered, there to live for nearly a year, sustaining life by eating grass, shrubs and roots. She walked more than 1400 miles in her wanderings and, when she at last emerged from desert, fate ruled that it was to be at a point where an army of Russian troops were encamped.
Practically naked, emaciated and on the point of death from her suffering, Aurora Mardiganian stumbled into the camp–and there fell exhausted. Kindly Russians cared for her and the commander of the army, a member of the Imperial House of Russia, listened to her story. Soon afterward Aurora, through the kindly influence of the Russians, was brought into contact with Gen. Andranik, the great Armenian patriot.
Why Gen. Andranik had listened to the full recital of Aurora Mardiganian’s story, he said to her:
“My little girl, you, among all the women of Armenia are destined to act as its savior. You have lived through experiences such as no woman has ever endured before. Go to America and tell them there how we have suffered. Tell them your story and perhaps the generous hearts of the Americans will open and they will send us help before our race is completely effaced from the earth.”
And so Aurora Mardiganian came to America to make her appeal. Her story is graphically depicted in “Ravished Armenia,” a photoplay the like of which has been screened before.