SHUSHANA ROMM

They marched for freedom, converging by the thousands on the sunlit avenues of Washington, D. C., on the eve of the Summit, l987. Christian and Jew, black and white, young and old, they came from everywhere, amazed at their own numbers. They marched together, those who had always known freedom, and some who had not. 200,000 strong, together they made history.

 Among those 200,000 were Shushana Shamilova Romm’s cousins, David Amiramov and Aunt Raisa Shamilova, marching for the freedom of refusenik Khushum Shamilov, Shushana’s father.  For l6 years, her father  fought to leave Russia and emigrate to Israel with his wife and five children.

 “Every six months, beginning in l972, my father renewed his application to emigrate,” says Shushana, one of five children who grew up in the southern part of Russia, in the mountainous region between the Caspian and Black Seas, “hoping to fulfill his one desire--moving to Israel and helping his people build the country. Each time, his application was refused.

 “I was just a child of 5 or 6,” Shushana  continues, “but I recall how, behind closed doors and drawn curtains, my father and his friends would listen to the Voice of Israel, sitting beneath a picture of Theodore Herzl hanging on our walls.” She will remember all her life how her father placed her on his lap, and traced the route from their home to Israel. He cautioned her never to speak about it in school.
 
 “Despite his trials, my father was a very good politician,” says Shushana. “He predicted that the Soviet regime would ultimately collapse.

 “My Dad had aspired to be involved in politics, but he was rejected, of course. He went to medical school instead,  and became chief of internal medicine at a military hospital. When he applied to emigrate, they took away his job at the military hospital, and he was forced to go into early retirement.  He persisted in his applications to emigrate for l6 years, writing to politicians in America and Great Britain for help, though my mother warned him,’You will end up in prison.’  He responded, ‘I don’t care about myself. I hope it will inspire my people to do the same‘.”
 
 The struggle for freedom had precedent in Shushana’s family. “In the
1920’s,” she recounts with pride, “my grandparents aspired to go to Palestine. They took their money and disappeared, traveling through Turkey to reach the Promised Land.”    

 Speaking of the town of her childhood, Shushana says, “There was a small synagogue in our town and a few Rebbes. It was a town of educated people, and businessmen who manufactured animal skins out of which they made shoes and clothes for the market.

 “I suffered a great deal from anti-Semitism as I was growing up,”  recalls Shushana. “The children called me a kike and wouldn’t play with me. Those early years left a scar in my heart, which will never disappear. My mother was forced to take me out of first grade and place me in another school where the children were mostly Jewish.”

 In l987, her father appealed to U.S. Secretary of State George Schulz, who came on a State visit to Russia. Shulz intervened on behalf of my father and l00 other families, who were finally allowed to emigrate to America.

 “When we arrived in Vienna,” Shushana  recalls, “my father, my mother and my three brothers, my father’s joy of release turned to grief. It was not my goal to go to America,’ he cried. He had agreed to leave just to escape Russia, not to live in America. His goal was Israel.  He went to the Jewish Agency with his youngest child, saying he had not intended to go to America.

 “Helpless in the face of his grief,” recalls Shushana, “we appealed to my aunt in New York, who had helped to organize the Soviet Jewry Rally in Wahington. ’Please come and talk to your brother, so that the family will not be separated,’ we begged my aunt and my cousin David. For two weeks she remained in Vienna, trying to prevail on him. He finally acceded, mourning that he had ‘sacrificed himself for his kids’.”

 The family settled in New York in February, l988, helped in their resettlement by HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Society). Shushana began her pharmaceutical studies at Long Island University.

 Shushana met Arkady, who came from Lithuania, in New York, and they were married in March, l989. Their first child, Jackie, was born in l99l.

 The family’s joy at arriving in the United States was mixed with grief, because their Dad’s first signs of non-Hodgkins lymphoma appeared shortly after their resettlement.

 The dream of journeying to Israel became an imperative as his illness took hold. But could he tolerate the journey? they asked themselves. Consulting with a doctor, they were met with the doctor’s tears. Whence the tears? the family wondered. “When I was in med school, the doctor recounted, “my father begged me to take him to Israel. I never took him….Yes, your father can take the journey,” he concluded.

 “But it was the week before Pesach,” Shushana recalls. “How were we to get the six tickets to fly on El Al? we wondered. We applied to a Russian travel agent, with little hope of success. A few days later, our travel agent called.  Someone had cancelled six tickets. We left for Israel in the midst of our move to Cherry Hill.

 “We toured Israel with my Dad for three weeks,” she recalls with sad nostalgia, and we took him everywhere. He lived for one more year after the trip, and was buried beneath a handful of dirt my brother had brought with him from Israel. As we placed the dirt on his grave in Queens, the sun broke from the clouds. My father only visited our home in Cherry Hill once, but I feel he is always with me.”

 Shushana and Arkady’s two girls, Rachel and Jackie, were born during the five years Shushana was studying at Long Island University School of Pharmacy. Jackie, born in l99l, Shushana’s second school year, was carried to her grandparents in a basket, where they cared for her while Shushana was at school. Because her mother was an alumna, her daughter Jackie, who is in her third year at the school, is there on a scholarship and is also a Dean’s List Scholar. Rachel, now l7, was born in Shushana’s fifth year of school. She now attends Brandeis university.

 Arkady and Shushana moved to Cherry Hill in 2000, near a cousin of Shoshana’s. Arkady, who has his own business, does much of his business by mail. Their third child, Dora, was born in Cherry Hill at Virtua Hospital, and Shushana was able to stay at home with her for the first year of her life.

 “I started working in the Pharmacy Department at Virtua Hospital in Cherry Hill in 2002, and next year I will mark my l0th year at the Hospital. We maintained a Jewish home, and joined Temple Beth Shalom (TBS).”

 Jackie and Rachel attended Hebrew School at TBS. They graduated from Rosa Middle School with the President’s Award. Jackie went to Cherry Hill East, and when she was in 9th grade she said, ’Mama, you want me to maintain Jewish values, you should send me to Yeshiva.” “I was proud to send her to Yeshiva in Central New Jersey,” Shushana says.

   “I had to wake at 5 a. m. to deliver Jackie to Politz at 6:30, where she caught the bus to Central Jersey. I went to work at 7, and she came home from school at 7 in the evening. She graduated from Mays Yeshiva and from there she went on to Long Island University Pharmacy School. Shushana determined that Dora would have a yeshiva education from early childhood, and she enrolled her in pre-school at Politz.

 “Chabad was the wonderful thing that happened to all of us,” Shushana exults. I began attending with my daughters, who promptly felt at home there. ‘They are your people,’ they happily told me about the Chabad shul. Arkady began studying Hewbrew, and little by little, he, too, began to come to Chabad. Six years ago, we kashered our home.

 “I am from Russia,” Shushana says, “and early on I came to know that life is a fight for survival. I love Chabad, not only for the home it has been for my family, but because they are fighters in the first line of battle. Wherever there are dangers, they are planting the seeds of renewal.”