Born in Paris, France, her mother, Anna Okner, lived in a common law marriage to a Rothenburg, with whom she had two daughters: Anna and Suszane. In 1913 her mother immigrated to Chicago, Illinois, where she married a widower, Ellias J. Bynam, who had two sons from his previous marriage.

Suzanne was raised mostly in Chicago, and spoke both Russian and German, in addition to English, fluently. Raised as a Socialist, in 1934, she moved to Moscow, USSR, to study her roots and to live in the communist system. In 1936, she married Nicholi Shopal, who worked for the communist government. When Nicholi was arrested in late 1939 under charges of Anti-Soviet Activities during one of many of Stalin’s trumped up show trials, she made continuous visits to authorities requesting to speak with her husband and demanding the authorities to release him. Neither request was granted. Two months after his arrest, she learned that she was about to be arrested herself for making trouble with the authorities, and although pregnant, she fled the country, returning to Chicago, where in January 1940 her son Nicholas was born. Nicholas was named for his father, and Suzanne anglicized their last names to Shestople, to be reflective of his Polish-Russian heritage. Shortly after the war, she would learn that her husband, Nicholi, had disappeared into the Gulag with no further records found. (In 1992, his son Nicholas learned that his father had survived seven years in the Gulag to return to Moscow, where he died in January 1990; the husband and wife would never see each other again, each believing the other was dead). During World War II, Susanne worked for the US State Department, as a film editor, and during the 1946 Nuremburg War Crimes Trials, she edited and translated captured German war films for the Allies. She died in Neu Ulm, West Germany in 1975. Her body was cremated, and her ashes were scattered over High Point State Park, New Jersey. (Bio by Kit and Morgan Benson, with the assistance of Nicholas Shestople)

Suzanne Shestople