Survivor with vivid memories at Woodmere Rehab — Your Health 2-13-09

A conversation about the war years with Sophie Blum, 94

By Malka Eisenberg

Issue of Feb. 13, 2009 / 19 Shevat 5769

Sophie Blum, age 94, davens three times a day, fasts every fast day and goes to shul every Shabbat in her wheelchair, as a resident of Woodmere Rehabilitation and Health Care Center, but the specter of her younger days during the Holocaust was and is often in her thoughts.

“My daughter says, ‘you were raising me but your heart was in Europe,’” explains Blum. While in Austria, Blum recalled seeing Hitler. “I saw him from the window,’” she said. “He yelled and screamed.”

Blum now shares a room on the first floor, and holds court from her wheelchair, a beige cap covering her hair, speaking clearly and articulately, looking steadily from behind wire rimmed glasses, wearing a rust colored jacket and fall colored scarf around her neck.

Born in Lvov, Poland (“now it’s Russia,” she said), Blum was the youngest of four children. Her brother went to cheder and later medical school in Austria. Her two sisters “went separate ways,” she noted. “No one knew which was the right way. I didn’t want to leave my father. He was very religious. My mother was in Vienna.” Her parents had separated at the time and her mother was from Austria.

When Blum developed a skin condition on her face, her father, concerned with her ability to land a shidduch, sent her to her mother in Austria to be seen by a prominent doctor who cured her. While there, Blum was hired by two Jewish families in two little towns in the mountains in Austria, Leahbin and Knitelfait. “They had money,” she recalled. “It was before the war. They wanted to go to Israel illegally. I was not married and stayed with the families for a few months and taught Hebrew.” She paused. “He came to the little cities,” she said referring to Hitler.

She stayed with her mother, who was a bookkeeper and fluent in Austrian, in Vienna. “The air was already not good,” she explained. “No one knew which direction to run. Hitler got stronger; he got elected. People were stupid. My brother was back from medical school; he was discharged because he was a Jew. I lost contact with my father, he wanted me to come back to Poland, he davened in a shteibel, he made a kiddush; I have letters from friends saying that my father missed me so he went to visit my friends.”

“I didn’t know things in Austria; in Poland I knew it well. It happened fast, the situation changed so quickly. There was nothing to eat. Who do you trust? They can give you out. They went to the super; he had a list and they came knocking on the door. The Nazis came for my father. I think my mother arranged for me to go underground. It was treacherous. One person went out and looked left and right; I don’t know how we got food. I would be shot for sure being Polish even though I had blond hair and could speak a little German. My mother didn’t go underground, she figured that maybe she would find a safer place.”

“They heard trumpets,” she said, recalling the end of the war.  “They announced in German that the war was over. Someone got out, there was a lot of movement, people running, happy that the war was over.”

She returned to Poland, but discovered that all her family had perished. She met her husband, Karl Blum, a survivor of Dachau, in Austria after the war. They married and moved to America. Karl was a tailor and though often ill from his war experiences worked steadily, sometimes holding two or three jobs. They had two children, Steve, a graduate of RJJ, and Arlene who attended public school and Talmud Torah.

“It was a tough time for my mom,” recounted daughter Arlene Greenblatt. “She was pregnant, with no money, no family, trying to find out if her family was alive. It was a sad time. They all died. It was always just the four of us, a small gathering for the holidays. She was always a very devoted mother and wife. Dad was sickly and she took care of him and was devoted to him. He lived to be 85. It was hard when he died.”  Blum’s children visit her often, Greenblatt said.

Greenblatt recalls the “lovely experience” of visiting cousins in the Bronx and Israel. Blum visited Israel in 1968. She maintains contact with friends in various facilities in Queens from the time she lived in Queens and continues to give tzedaka there and to the shul.