Jewish Personalities: February 2008 Archives

MARTHA BLUM, 94: WRITER

Pharmacist survived the Holocaust to publish her first novel at 86

All told, the Saskatoon teacher and musician wrote three books -- all in longhand and all while lying in bed. As a result, her duvet covers were forever stained with ink

KELLY-ANNE RIESS

Special to the Globe and Mail

February 13, 2008

REGINA -- For years, Holocaust survivor and retired pharmacist Martha Blum kept her writing to herself. Then, at 86, she published her first novel, The Walnut Tree, which tells the story of a well-to-do Jewish woman who uses her skills as a pharmacist to save her family from the Nazis.

The novel went on to be a finalist for the Canadian Booksellers Association's Ex Libris Award but lost to Alistair Macleod's masterpiece, No Great Mischief.

Mrs. Blum was born in 1913 in Czernowitz, Austria (now Chernivtsi, Ukraine). With the defeat of Germany and Austria at the end of the First World War, the city became part of Romania and remained so while Mrs. Blum was growing up.

Her family owned a large pharmaceutical plant. Her parents, Abraham and Susi Guttmann, and her older brother, Wilhelm, were all pharmacologists. Coming from a wealthy family, she was cared for by a French governess who taught her piano, as well as French.

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For holidays, she was often sent to her grandfather's house in Suczawa, Austria. Mrs. Blum cherished these visits, because it was with him that she learned many practical skills, such as cooking and herding geese. Back at her parents' home, servants took care of such things.

Mrs. Blum wanted to be a doctor, but her father pressured her to study pharmacy and sent her to be schooled in Prague and later Paris. It was while she was in university in 1935 that she married a young mathematician named Richard Blum, who was also from Czernowitz.

They would have only a few happy years together before the outbreak of the Second World War. By that time, the couple had returned to Czernowitz and, being Jewish, it wasn't long before they were rounded up by the Nazis and isolated in a ghetto. Life was miserable. Sanitation was poor and many people died of disease. Those not fit for work did not receive food coupons and were left to starve.

The Blums were luckier than most. As pharmacologists, their profession was considered an essential service and they were made to work as slaves, filling the prescriptions of German soldiers.

It was this work that kept them out of the concentration camps. Even so, Mrs. Blum couldn't tolerate life in the ghetto. She and her family shared a room with 17 other families. Fed up, she marched over to the SS officer in command and refused to work unless her family was allowed to return home to Czernowitz.

Although she won the concession, they still were not safe. One day, while out walking, her husband was picked up by soldiers and sent to a work camp.

In 1944, fighting between the Soviet Union and the Germans intensified around Czernowitz and she decided to move to Bucharest, the capital of Romania. She hid aboard a train, but not before sending her husband a message. She wrote a note in the margin of a newspaper. "I'll be waiting for you," it said.

The newspaper got passed from person to person until it finally reached him at the work camp. Not long after that, the work camp was ordered closed and the officer in charge was told to shoot all the inmates. Fortunately, the officer could not bring himself to do it. Instead, he opened the gates in the middle of the night and set the men free.

Months later, after travelling all the way on foot, her husband arrived in Bucharest. It was there that Mrs. Blum started life over. She opened her own pharmacy and later gave birth to the only child she would have, Irene.

After the war, Romania was absorbed into the Soviet sphere of Communist countries. Mrs. Blum, coming from an entrepreneurial family, opposed the values of communism. In 1950, her pharmacy was confiscated and her husband made some anti-Communist statements that placed the couple on a list of undesirables. At that point, they knew they must leave the country.

Mrs. Blum spent three days waiting in line to get passports and, with them, they hoped to catch a boat to Israel. Luck was again with them. A friend who was unable to travel gave them tickets for a boat about to depart. Next day, two boats left for Israel but only theirs would arrive. The other was severely overloaded and sank.

Once in Israel, Mrs. Blum worked as a pharmacist and her husband worked on a photogrammetry project for the Israeli government. Her brother, Wilhelm, also joined her in Israel and would found a large pharmaceutical company there called Assia, a forerunner of the giant Teva Pharmaceutical Industries. At it turned out, the Blums would stay just one year in Israel. Mrs. Blum's parents had already immigrated to Canada and, in 1951, they followed with their daughter.

After a spell in Wolfville, N.S., where her husband taught at Acadia University, they settled in Saskatoon where Mr. Blum joined the faculty of the University of Saskatchewan.

Mrs. Blum found a part-time, morning job at a pharmacy, unbeknownst to her daughter. As far as Irene was concerned, Mrs. Blum was a stay-at-home mom. Mrs. Blum got her daughter off to school in the morning and was home by lunchtime. "She didn't want me to know I wasn't her only focus," said Irene.

From time to time, Mrs. Blum taught at the university's college of pharmacy and nutrition, and accepted invitations to visit high schools to talk about the Holocaust.

Mrs. Blum also wrote about the Holocaust, but she kept that work a secret as well. When Irene found out, she encouraged her mother to find a publisher and the first manuscript ended up at Coteau Books, a publishing house in Regina.

Mrs. Blum's editor, Geoffrey Ursell, remembers fondly sitting at Mrs. Blum's table eating chocolate and working on the manuscript with her. He described the work as lyrical.

The Walnut Tree was launched at the Delta Bessborough Hotel, and more than 500 people poured into the ballroom to hear Mrs. Blum read from her work.

Mrs. Blum would write two more books: Children of Paper, which was based on her memories of visiting her grandfather as a child, and The Apothecary, which was about a young man who survives the war as a pharmacist and finds himself in Vienna in the 1960s. The Apothecary won a Saskatchewan Book Award.

Mrs. Blum wrote all three of her books long-hand in bed. As a result, her duvet cover was stained with ink.

In addition to writing, Mrs. Blum was an accomplished musician who used her knowledge of French, English, German, Romanian, Hebrew, Yiddish, Spanish and Italian to help helped performers sing in different languages. Even if she didn't speak the required language, Mrs. Blum learned it anyway. For instance, she researched Bulgarian for a student who was to perform at an international vocal competition in Bulgaria. The student's perfect pronunciation so impressed the judges that they assumed Mrs. Blum was Bulgarian.

For her accomplishments in writing and music, Mrs. Blum received an honorary doctorate from the University of Saskatchewan in 2006. Eight years earlier, she was one of 50 Holocaust survivors recognized by the Canadian Human Rights Commission for their contributions to society.

MARTHA BLUM

Martha Blum was born on June 30, 1913, in Czernowitz, Austria. She died of heart failure in Saskatoon on Dec. 12, 2007. She was 94. In her final moments, she uttered the word "poetry" three times. She is survived by her daughter Irene Blum of Edmonton. She was predeceased by her husband, who died in November, 2004.