Victor Herman
Victor Herman | |
|---|---|
Photograph of Victor Herman with his Russian family after they arrived in the United States ca. 1977. From left: daughter Svetlana, wife Galina, his Russian mother-in-law, daughter Jaana. | |
| Born | 1915 |
| Died | 1985 |
Victor Herman (September 25, 1915 – March 25, 1985) was a Jewish-American who spent 18 years as a Soviet prisoner in the Gulags of Siberia. At 16 years of age, his family (and about 300 other Ford Motor Company families) went to work in the Soviet Union in the early 1930s but met tragic fates during the Stalin purges.
Herman briefly held the world record in 1934 for the highest parachute jump and became known as the 'Lindbergh of Russia'. He was accused of espionage, arrested and imprisoned in 1938, after repeatedly refusing to declare the Soviet citizenship.
His memoir of his experiences, Coming Out of the Ice (1979), became the basis for a 1982 CBS-TV movie starring John Savage and country singer Willie Nelson.