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Lecture | March 16, 2021

The Stateless Diplomat: Diana Apcar's Heroic Life (film)

Mimi Malayan
Filmmaker

Via Zoom
5:00 PM - 7:00 PM

A screening and discussion of The Stateless Diplomat: Diana Apcar’s Heroic Life with the filmmaker, Mimi Malayan.

During World War I, some Armenian refugees fleeing the genocide in Anatolia, traveled 7000 miles to the Russian port city of Vladivostok, hoping to emigrate to America. Unable to gain asylum in Japan without proper documentation, Diana Agabeg Apcar, an Armenian woman living in Yokohama, intervened with Japanese officials to provide entry for three to four thousand refugees; Apcar found them housing and food, and coordinated their ship passage to the U.S. She became the Japanese representative for the Armenians housed by the American Red Cross of Vladivostok. Mimi Malayan is Diana Apcar’s great-granddaughter and has been researching her life and writing. In 2004, she “found” the “lost” manuscript of Apcar’s From the Book of One Thousand Tales: Stories of Armenia and its people 1892-1922.