Spotlight: Tatiana Schaufuss

Spotlight on Tatiana Schaufuss

Opa was given the suggestion to contact Tatiana Schaufuss with the American Committee for Christian Refugees in New York. Most information on Schaufuss references her helping establish the Tolstoy Foundation, a Foundation that helped Russian refugees. She started it with Alexandra Tolstoy, daughter of Leo Tolstoy. I can’t find much on the American Committee for Christian Refugees, but will update if I do. Otherwise, below is a brief bio of Tatiana from http://www.tolstoyfoundation.org/schaufuss.html:

Born in Russia in 1891, Tatiana Schaufuss came to the United States in 1938 and helped to establish the Tolstoy Foundation. If Alexandra Tolstoy was the heart and the soul of the Foundation, Mrs. Schaufuss was its principal architect and builder. Astute, professional and pragmatic, she was the driving force behind the Foundation's programs and activities worldwide.

For over 40 years, she served the Tolstoy Foundation as Executive Director, Executive Vice President and later as President. She expanded the Foundation's work in the United States and overseas with offices in Europe, the Middle East, Canada and throughout South America. Mrs. Schaufuss successfully interceded on behalf of tens of thousands of Russian refugees who found themselves living under communist domination after World War II and arranged for their resettlement in the United States.

After World War II, under the auspices of the former U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, Mrs. Schaufuss established homes for the aged in France, West Berlin and South America. In 1970, she founded the Tolstoy Foundation Nursing Home in Valley Cottage, New York.

Mrs. Schaufuss lived and worked actively at the TF Center until 1984. She died in 1986 at age 95 in the Foundation Nursing Home which she helped establish.