Aurora Mardiganian was the daughter of a prosperous Armenian family living in Chmshgatsak (Çemişgezek), 20 miles (32 km) north of Harput, Ottoman Turkey. She witnessed the deaths of her family members and was forced to march over 1,400 mi (2,300 km), during which she was kidnapped and sold into the slave markets of Anatolia. Mardiganian escaped to Tiflis (modern Tbilisi, Georgia), then to St. Petersburg, from where she traveled to Oslo and finally, with the help of Near East Relief, to New York City.