Ziemans ‘Stunned’ as 11-Year Struggle Ends : Refusenik Family in Summit Limelight Leaves

Members of a Soviet Jewish refusenik family who became the center of a superpower tug-of-war during the Moscow summit emigrated to the West today, ending an 11-year struggle to leave their homeland.

Yuri and Tanya Zieman and their 12-year-old daughter, Vera, smiled broadly as they stepped off an Aeroflot jet from Moscow.

Asked how she felt on arriving in the West at last, Tanya Zieman said simply, “Stunned.” Her daughter, clutching a welcoming bouquet from well-wishers, giggled, “Excited.”

The family will stay in Vienna until Friday, when they will fly to Boston for a reunion with an older daughter who emigrated in 1987 with her husband.

President Reagan had planned to visit the Zieman family at their south Moscow apartment on May 29 during the summit meeting to underscore the United States’ concern for human rights in the Soviet Union.

But a high-ranking Soviet official told the Americans that if Reagan visited the family they never would be allowed to emigrate.

Reagan did not visit the family, and two weeks after he left they were told their application had been refused again and that they should reapply in 1992. However, within weeks they received official permission to leave.