Life

Daughter of the prominent Armenian writer and parliamentarian Krikor Zohrab and his wife Clara, Dolores Zohrab Liebmann was born on January 13, 1896 in Constantinople (Istanbul). She was raised in an environment which emphasized the importance of education, travel and the preservation of the Armenian heritage and culture.

Dolores Zohrab Liebmann witnessed the arrest and removal of her father from her family’s home in Constantinople (Istanbul) in 1915, an experience that marked her profoundly. With her two brothers Leon and Aram already attending school in Europe, Mrs. Liebmann, her sister Herminé and their mother fled through Austria to Paris. She remained in the French capital until the death of her mother, after which Mrs. Liebmann moved to Romania, where one of her brothers was living. In 1932, Mrs. Liebmann married Henry Liebmann, an American brewing heir from Brooklyn. Mrs. Liebmann settled in New York with her new husband and became an America citizen in 1934.

Philanthropy

After the death of her husband in 1950, Mrs. Liebmann began dedicating herself to benevolent causes. She supported the Armenian Church and its programs, as well as the Armenian General Benevolent Union in an effort to keep the Armenian identity alive in the Diaspora. As a proponent of education, she generously endowed an academic program in Armenian Studies and The Krikor and Clara Zohrab Fellowship at Columbia University. Her charitable efforts also extended to non-Armenian causes, such as the American Red Cross, to which she not only contributed her resources, but also her time as a volunteer. Additionally, she supported research at the Rockefeller University and the New York Public Library. Her philanthropic legacy is kept alive today through the posthumous establishment of the Dolores Zohrab Liebmann Fund, a prestigious grant for graduate students in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences, regardless of ethnic background.

The creation of The Krikor and Clara Zohrab Information Center was Mrs. Liebmann’s last major benevolent project before her death on September 15, 1991. As the first Armenian information center of its kind, the Zohrab Center was opened and dedicated on November 8, 1987 in the presence of His Holiness Vasken I, Supreme Patriarch and Catholicos of All Armenians, and His Eminence Archbishop Torkom Manoogian, Primate of the Diocese of the Armenian Church of America (Eastern).