Maria Jacobsen

Maria Jacobsen was a Danish missionary and a key witness to the Armenian Genocide. Jacobsen wrote the Diaries of a Danish Missionary Harpoot, 19071919, which according to Armenian Genocide scholar Ara Sarafian, is a documentation of the utmost significance for research of the Armenian Genocide. For her humanitarian efforts, Jacobsen is known as Mayrik or Mama for having saved many Armenians during the Genocide.

Maria Jacobsen was born in Denmark in the town of Siim near Ry onNovember 1882 and as a child, she lived in Horsens with her father Jens Jacobsen and mother Ane Kristine Pedersen. At an early age, Jacobsen had learned about the massacres of Armenians during the Hamidian massacres from the Danish media. Christian organizations throughout the world started a campaign to express their solidarity with the Armenians and to serve to help them. When Mrs. Jessie PennLewis, a feminist activist, came to Denmark from England in 1898, she helped form the Womens Missionary Workers in 1900. Jacobsen soon participated in the support and relief efforts of orphans in the eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire.

Source: Wikipedia