(Susan Alexis Komisaruk)

Born: 1958

As an anti-nuclear protest, Komisaruk destroyed a government computer—a crime for which she later said she expected to go to court. In committing a crime for which she intended to be caught and punished, she hoped to bring the anti-nuclear cause into the public eye and help steer the United States away from nuclear war.

Radical beginnings

Born in the late 1950s, Susan Alexis Komisaruk was raised in Michigan and California. Her parents, a psychiatrist and homemaker who later divorced, were well-educated liberals who taught their daughter to question authority. Born to a Jewish family with roots in the Ukraine, Komisaruk had relatives who died in the Holocaust (the period of persecution and extermination of European Jews by Nazi Germany). Her parents, who were Zionists, instilled in their daughter a sharp awareness of the Holocaust and of the events that...