Obituaries
Amy Adina Schulman, ardent Zionist, political activist, and student, died suddenly of a brain aneurysm on November 13, 1986 in New Brunswick, N.J., at age 20.
Born and raised in Princeton, Amy Adina was part of the Labor Zionist movement from the age of 12.
At Rutgers University, where she was studying neurobiology and Judaic-Studies, Amy Adina was a leader of the Progressive Zionist Caucus and founder of her Bayit, one of a nationwide network of campus residences organized around Jewish activities.
On campus, she made waves — struggling to unite Zionist organizations and liberation movements in common causes of solidarity.
Her parents Ruth and Mel Schulman and her brothers Dan and Joel Schulman have established a trust to provide scholarships and funding for programs which promote the causes to which she was committed. Contributions may be sent to the Amy Adina Memorial Fund, c/o The Jewish Center, Princeton, New Jersey, 08540.
—Sherry Rosen
Caroline Gruss, who, with her husband Joseph Gruss, was a leading benefactor of Jewish education in the United States and Israel, died at home Jan. 14 after a long illness. She was 76. Born in Poland, Gruss was trained as a lawyer at the University of Lvov, where she also studied classical languages. She and her husband came to the United States in 1937. The Caroline and Joseph Gruss Center at Yeshiva University in Jerusalem is a modern, five-acre complex designed as a permanent campus-home for programs in Israel. The Grusses also established and expanded several Jewish schools.
Inna Meiman of Moscow, who was allowed to go abroad for treatment of a tumor on her neck died Feb. 9 in Georgetown University Hospital. She was 54 years old.
She had refused to leave the Soviet Union earlier because her husband, Naum, a refusenik, was not allowed to accompany her. Inna, a teacher of English was married in 1981 to Naum, a mathematician who has been refused an exit visa for 12 years.
Meiman was admitted to the hospital on January 20 and was undergoing tests for the start of chemotherapy. When she applied to go abroad she said she wanted to undergo specialized radiation treatment, her only hope for survival.
The Soviets granted Meiman a temporary visa for one year’s stay. They would not allow her husband to come with her and had turned down his visa request on grounds of knowing “state secrets.” He is also characterized as a dissident by dint of his membership in the now disbanded Moscow Helsinki monitoring group.
When she arrived in Washington, Inna Meiman described her own prognosis as “very grim.” She said that if she “had been allowed to come three years ago, my chances would be better.” She added that she was also dismayed that her husband, her son and his family were not permitted to join her. Her husband’s daughter, Olga Plum, lives in Boulder CO.
On arriving here, Meiman said, “I haven’t come to America to die; I have come to recover and to help others to get out of the Soviet Union.” Admitting that she had left the USSR, and her husband, with mixed emotions, said she was “delighted” to prove “we are not slaves but people with rights.” (JTA)
Yuri Suhl, a novelist, poet and biographer who was active in the civil rights and peace movements and the preservation of Yiddish culture, died in Oak Bluffs, Mass., on November 8 at the age of 78.
Suhl authored four books of Yiddish verse. He was best known for his English works, which included Ernestine Rose and the Battle for Rights (NY: Reynal & Co., 1959, out of print) and They fought Back, a history of Jewish resistance in Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II, published in 1967.
He was the author of 10 books for children and two autobiographical novels, “One Foot in America” and “Cowboy on a Wooden Horse.”
Suhl became controversial for his efforts to prevent the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. He became a trustee of the Rosenberg Children’s Trust Fund. Suhl was also an outspoken critic of the persecution of Jews in Poland and the Soviet Union. He identified himself politically as a Socialist. (JTA)
