Bluma (Blenda) Rudaitsky

wiki page: http://familytree.wikidot.com/bluma-bluhm

Bluma immigrated to Sweden in 1901 from Pikkale , Lithuania according to her immigration papers and her daughter Paula.

Paula wrote:

She married a rebbe or melamed. He couldn't make a living. They decided to go further afield and so they went to Sweden. They didn't have money for traveling far. They lived first in Malmo. Ruth Furman sought them out and found them.

The only thing I know was that my mother came to Sweden 1901...My dear mother went all by herself not knowing the language or any thing. My dear sister Ejde died seven years ago at the age of 71.

Isidore's daughter Gunilla wrote:

The information I got from the Jewish congregation where my grandparents first registered when they came to Sweden, claims that my grandmother was born in Pikkalle, Poland. However my aunt claims that she has always heard they came from Tilsit. Perhaps it is just a matter of a place changed name, like Tilsit nowadays is called Sovjetsk?...

There are extremely many photos of my dad {Isidor} and aunts and grandfather, but my grandmother {Bluma} does not seem to have liked to have been photographed. Unfortunately the photo is not very good so it is quite difficult to see clearly. What I have always heard though is that my grandmother was well known for her blue eyes. My aunt Paula's daughter and granddaughter have inherited the same 'blue look'. The photo was taken approximately in 1921. I think it was at the time of my oldest aunt's engagement {Ejda}. It is her fiancee, Philip, who is standing in the back. Philip, a Polish Jew much older than my aunt, was a husband that my grandfather chose as suitable for my aunt. Unfortunately he turned out not to be so suitable. He was a mean alcoholic who beat my aunt and their four children. Five years after this photo was taken my aunt was, due to her husband's behavior, sent to a mental hospital where she had to stay for the rest of her life. He also beat my grandparents and nearly killed my grandmother. My Dad and Aunt Paula never liked this man, not even from the beginning. You can see at the photo that they try to stand as far away from him as possible, and they do not look too happy.

I have asked Aunt Paula and also my cousin Sonya [who grew up with my grandparents] what my grandmother had told about her childhood. It seems like she was not too fond to talk about it. Apparently her stepmother was not very nice to her, she had to do all work, etc., so she always said that she then decided that if she ever had children of her own she would be kind to them. I don't think they had much contact because my grandfather wrote in a letter in the mid 30's that they were surprised that the stepmother was still alive [they had just gotten a letter from her asking for money].

As you knew my grandmother Bluma [or Blenda as she changed her name to in Sweden] married my grandfather Abraham Jacob Bluhm, who studied to be a rabbi. My oldest aunt, Ejde [or Lisa as she was called later in Sweden] was born in Pikalle, in Lithuania. Most of the relatives emigrated, and since they did not have much money my grandfather found himself a job as a religious tutor [I am not sure of the correct English word] to a rich Jewish family called Lapidus [they were in the textile industry] who lived in the west of Sweden. I think he stayed for about a year when he heard that the small town of Oskarshamn [on the east coast of Sweden, just across from the Baltic countries] needed someone to work in their Jewish community. He went there and sent for my grandmother, who traveled all on her own, with my aunt as a small baby, to Sweden [via Hamburg I think]. In Oskarshamn, there were then about 10 Jewish families, who had been longer in Sweden. These families were quite hostile to my grandparents [I guess they did not like poor immigrants to come to Sweden], and never invited them to high holidays etc. On the other hand, the Swedish families were very nice to my dad and his sisters, and their best friends were non Jewish. My grandfather was a very pious man, and he traveled over most of Southern Sweden to different Jewish communities to help them with all different kinds of things. He could not support himself that way, so he also spent time walking around in farms and villages selling things. In those days there were quite a lot of Jews in the small towns of southern Sweden [most came from Eastern Europe], but nowadays most Jews live in Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmo. There is no accurate figure of the number of Jews living in Sweden, but there are 19,000 members of Jewish congregations. [Those who are not members of any congregation are not counted]. You can compare that with Sweden's 9 million inhabitants [we also have over 50,000 Moslems living here.]

Anyway, my grandparents stayed in this small town until they died. My grandfather was known for his terrible temper, all the neighbors were afraid of him. But my grandmother was known to be very kind and sweet. She was very much appreciated by everybody who knew her. She was [as all Jewish mothers] very proud of her children, and especially of her son. My father studied and became a doctor, my oldest aunt worked as a photographer before she married and my Aunt Paula worked in an office before she married Erwin Frankenthal [a wealthy merchant, originally from Hamburg]. My family was very lucky that Sweden was not invaded by the Germans during the Second World War. All other countries in Scandinavia were invaded. I am convinced that the same thing would have happened in Sweden like in Denmark and Norway where Jews were deported. I guess my family knew more than most, since Aunt Paula's mother-in-law managed to come to Sweden from Hamburg in 1939 on 'the last train' and she could tell what was beginning to happen. A lot of people were anti-Semitic, and most were pro-German. I guess people would have been happy to report all Jews. Did you know that it was Sweden who made Germany put a J in all the passports of German Jews, just so it would not be difficult to know who to refuse entry to Sweden in the 30's. A majority of Swedish medical students also protested against letting Jewish refugee doctors immigrate to Sweden [this was in 1938-39. I guess this made Jews in Sweden more eager to try and integrate into the Swedish society, so that they were not picked at. Neither my Dad nor my Aunt are very religious, perhaps they were also turned off by my grandparents being very religious. Who knows?