Suzanne Wasserman, Historian of New York City and Filmmaker, Dies at 60

Suzanne Rachel Wasserman was born on May 26, 1957, in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago to Edward Wasserman, a psychoanalyst, and the former Eileen Kronberg, a homemaker. She graduated from the University of Wisconsin and earned her Ph.D. from New York University. She taught at N.Y.U., the New School for Social Research and Iona College.


Throughout her years at the Gotham Center, Ms. Wasserman built a second career as a filmmaker, producing and directing four documentaries.

The first one, “Thunder in Guyana” (2003), was about Janet Jagan, her mother’s first cousin. Born Janet Rosenberg, Ms. Jagan was a nursing student in Chicago when she fell in love with Cheddi Jagan, a Guyanese dentistry student at Northwestern University. Over her conservative parents’ objections, they married and left for the former British Guiana, where they became involved in radical politics and Dr. Jagan became chief minister of the government.

“I had met her on and off over the years,” Ms. Wasserman said in a lecture at St. Francis College in Brooklyn in 2012. “I was always fascinated with her and thought that someday I would do something about her. I didn’t know if I would make a film or not.”

The British jailed the Jagans for their Marxist ideas in the 1950s. After their release, Dr. Jagan returned to power as chief minister, and Ms. Jagan became labor minister. In 1992, he was elected president of free Guyana; after his death in 1997, she won the election to succeed him.

“I wondered if the Guyanese people would really elect a 77-year-old Jewish woman for president,” Ms. Wasserman said.

They did, but Ms. Jagan served for less than two years, stepping down after a heart attack.

Ms. Wasserman made three more documentaries: “Sweatshop Cinderella,” about the immigrant writer Anzia Yezierska; “Brooklyn Among the Ruins,” about the subway buff Paul Kronenberg; and “Meat Hooked!” about three butchers, one of whom, Jeffrey Ruhalter, had a family-run shop in the Essex Street Market on the Lower East Side.

Reviewing the film for The Forward, Tahneer Oksman wrote, “Though I had to look away at certain parts of the film (a pig slaughter was hard to stomach), Wasserman skillfully weaves historical and personal narratives throughout to grant her viewers frequent reprieves.”

In addition to her son, Ms. Wasserman is survived by her husband, David Stern, and her sisters, Tina, Stephanie and Nadine Wasserman.