Rudzīte Karola (Lindenkampf)

Rudzīte, Karola Karola Rudzīte (née Lindenkampf, 1912) lived in Rīga with her husband and their baby daughter, but shortly after the occupation of the city, on July 1, 1941, she moved with her family to the town of Sigulda, Vidzeme. From the early days of the German occupation, Rudzīte hid her bed-ridden mother, Rosalija Markusevic, at her home, and helped her other Jewish relatives and friends interned in the Rīga ghetto – members of the Markusevic, Wolpert, Karlin and Gavronski families – providing them with food, even after the locals were forbidden to enter the ghetto. On December 5, 1941, some time after the first Aktion in the ghetto, Rudzīte took the Wolperts’ nine-year-old daughter Inna, out of the ghetto, and returned with her to Sigulda. During the entire period of the occupation, she hid the child in her apartment, in spite of the opposition of her husband to keeping the Jewish child. Rudzīte continued to travel occasionally to Rīga to visit her friends in the ghetto and at their places of work. She attracted the attention of the Rīga police and was arrested, but was released several days later since there was no evidence to incriminnate her. On October 7, 1944, Sigulda was liberated and Inna Wolpert was able to leave the house, for the first time in three years. The only one of her large family to survive was her father, Miron Wolpert, who came to claim his daughter. Inna continued to keep in touch with her rescuer, who moved to Hamburg, Germany. Some years later, Inna (later Hait) immigrated to Israel. On March 20, 1986, Yad Vashem recognized Karola Rudzīte as Righteous Among the Nations.