Roman Borisovich Klebanov died on February 18, 2020 at the Princeton Medical Center, just twelve days short of his 65th wedding anniversary. He was born on October 14, 1925 in the city of Kharkov, Ukrainian Republic, Soviet Union (currently Kharkiv, Ukraine) to Boris Moiseevich Klebanov, an accountant, and Ida Iosifovna Alshitz, a dentist.
In the early 1930’s, Roman’s father was falsely accused by Stalinist authorities and exiled from Kharkov to a village near Priluky, Ukraine. His family joined him later, and Roman began his education in a village school, which he attended for 6 years. The family was allowed to return to Kharkov in 1939.
In the fall of 1941, shortly after Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, the Klebanov family fled to Siberia in order to escape the Holocaust. They lived for several years in Berdsk, which is near Novosibirsk. Roman worked hard at a factory making parts for military planes and studied at an evening school. In 1946 Roman graduated with a gold medal and was admitted to the Kharkov Medical Institute. Initially he studied in the Department of General Medicine, but in 1951 was forced to transfer to Military Medicine, graduating in 1952. He was then dispatched to the northern tip of Sakhalin, the island located north of Japan. This was one of the most remote places in the Soviet Union, notorious for its inhospitable climate. Roman worked there as a regiment physician, while concurrently taking correspondence courses in English at the Institute of Foreign Languages in Moscow. In January-February 1955 Roman was on leave from Sakhalin to take the final language exams in Moscow.
On a subsequent visit to Kharkov in mid-February, he met Sofya Rakhman, a young physician who also spent the war years in Berdsk. They fell in love and in a few days made a trip to the town of Shakhty, not far from Rostov-on-Don, where Sofya’s parents lived. Sofya and Roman got married on March 1, 1955 and immediately departed for Sakhalin. The trip by plane involved many stops and took several days because it was interrupted by blizzards. Sofya worked as a physician in northern Sakhalin for close to a year. On January 3, 1956 Roman and Sofya’s daughter Klavdia (Claudia) was born; by then Sofya was on leave from Sakhalin and staying with her parents in Shakhty. In 1957 Roman was allowed to leave Sakhalin, and the family settled in Kharkov. Roman began working at the Ukrainian Institute of Rehabilitation, where he conducted medical research in Neurology. On March 29, 1962, Roman and Sofya’s son Igor was born in Shakhty.
Roman defended his Ph.D. dissertation in 1963 in Kharkov. He conducted further research supervised by a prominent Moscow neurologist who was a member of the Soviet Academy of Medical Sciences. In 1972 Roman defended his Doctor of Sciences dissertation in Moscow, thus attaining the highest possible Soviet scientific degree.
In 1978, Roman, Sofya, and their two children crossed the Iron Curtain and emigrated from the Soviet Union. After a 3-month stay in Italy, they moved to New York City. Roman found a position at the Rockland Research Institute. He co-authored a number of research papers in Neurology and Psychiatry, which were based on his research in the United States and Soviet Union. Concurrently, Roman passed his medical licensing examinations. He completed his internship and residency at the New York Medical College and was honored as one of the top graduating residents. From 1982 until 2001 he worked as a staff psychiatrist at Bronx State Psychiatric, and later Manhattan State Psychiatric Hospital located on Wards Island off Manhattan. Also, together with his wife Sofya, he maintained a private practice in New York City. In 2000 Claudia passed away after a long illness. In 2014 Roman and Sofya moved to Princeton, New Jersey, to be closer to the family of their son, who is a Professor of Physics at Princeton University. Roman is survived by his wife Sofya, son Igor, daughter-in-law Pamela, and granddaughters Rachel of Washington, DC, and Sarah, a senior at Princeton University.
Roman was a brilliant man, distinguished by erudite knowledge and a remarkable sense of humor. Even in his advanced age he retained his amazing memory and keen interest in just about anything: people, history, politics, literature, music, etc. He was a very loving husband and a doting father and grandfather. Roman was remarkably kind and generous, helping not only his relatives, but also many other people throughout his life. We will cherish fond memories of him as long as we are alive.
Fond memories and expressions of sympathy may be shared at www.sbjmemorialchapel.com for the KLEBANOV family.
SHARE OBITUARY
v.1.8.18