Ravished Armenia
Author | Arshaluys (Aurora) Mardiganian |
---|---|
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Genre | Autobiography |
Publication date | 1918 |
Media type | Hardcover |
Text | Ravished Armenia online |
Ravished Armenia (full title: Ravished Armenia: The Story of Aurora Mardiganian, the Christian Girl, Who Survived the Great Massacres) is a book written in 1918 by Arshaluys (Aurora) Mardiganian about her experiences in the Armenian genocide.
A Hollywood film based on it was filmed in 1919 under the title Auction of Souls (which also became known as Ravished Armenia, based on the book from which it was adapted). All known complete copies of the film have since been lost, but Mardiganian's account is still in print.[1]
Plot
The author
She found refuge with Frederick W. MacCallum, a Canadian doctor and missionary stationed with the
Aurora Mardiganian, a survivor of the Armenian genocide of 1915–1923, recalled sixteen young Armenian girls being "crucified" by their Ottoman tormentors. The film Auction of Souls (1919), which was based on her book Ravished Armenia, showed the victims nailed to crosses. However, almost 70 years later Mardiganian revealed to film historian Anthony Slide that the scene was inaccurate. She described what was actually an impalement. She stated that "The Turks didn't make their crosses like that. The Turks made little pointed crosses. They took the clothes off the girls. They made them bend down, and after raping them, they made them sit on the pointed wood, through the vagina. That's the way they killed – the Turks. Americans have made it a more civilized way. They can't show such terrible things."[2][3]
The book was written by journalist Henry Leyford Gates, whose novelist-wife Eleanor Brown Gates became Mardiganian's legal guardian in America.[4]
See also
- Henry Morgenthau, Sr.
- The Forty Days of Musa Dagh
References
- ^ Armenian National Institute Review
- ISBN 978-0-292-74269-7.
- ISBN 9781617038488. (reprinting the original book along with the script of the film and including commentary on the film, its distribution and impact, and Aurora Mardiganian's comments to editor Anthony Slide.)
- ^ Bone, James (2016). The Curse of Beauty: The Scandalous and Tragic Life of Audrey Munson, America's First Supermodel. ReganArts.
Further reading
- Slide, Anthony. Ravished Armenia and the Story of Aurora Mardiganian. ISBN 0810833115, 9780810833111.
External links
- Ravished Armenia by Aurora Mardiganian at Project Gutenberg
- Ravished Armenia (film portion) and Ravished Armenia (book) available for free download at Internet Archive