Blum Abrasza (Abraham)

Abrasza (Abraham) Blum - Personal data
Date of birth: 1905
Place of birth: Wilno
Date of death: May 1943
Place of death: Warszawa
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Abraham Blum (1905, Vilnius – May 1943, Warsaw) — an engineer, an activist in Tsukunft and the Bund, and a fighter in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. 

Blum was born in Vilnius. His family ran a candy factory. He attended a reformed cheder and then the Jewish junior high school of Zofia Gurewicz. During his school years, he was already active in the socialist student circle, which was ideologically inclined towards communism. He quickly became disillusioned with communism and joined the Social Democratic Youth Union (Polish: Socjaldemokratyczny Związek Młodzieży), which later merged with Yugnt-Bund Tsukunft.

After graduating from school, Abraham went on to study at Altenburg Technical School and then graduated from Ghent University with honours. He was active in the Union of Jewish Students (Polish: Związek Studentów Żydowskich) in Ghent.

He returned to Poland and settled in Warsaw. He married Luba Bielicka, who was from Vilnius, and who was the deputy director of the Nursing School at the Jewish Hospital in Czyste (Polish: Szkoła Pielęgniarska przy Szpitalu na Czystem), as well as a Bund activist. Blum rejected the offer to run the family factory and decided to dedicate himself to working for Tsukunft and the Bund. He spoke at rallies and was involved in organising secular schools in the spirit of the Bund. He published in the monthly "Jugnt Weker".

After the outbreak of World War II, he joined the defence of Warsaw.

Along with other Bund activists, he tried to continue the publication of the party newspaper “Folkscajtung”. After the departure of older Bund activists from Warsaw, Blum, along with young activists from Tsukunft, took over the leadership of the organisation. In the ghetto, he continued his political activities in secret. He was involved in publishing illegal magazines – “Biuletin” from 1940 to 1941 and “Der Weker”, “Cajtfragn” and “Der Glok” between January and April 1942.

He lived in the building of the Nursing School run in the ghetto by his wife, Luba, at 1 Mariańska Street, and later at 6 Gęsia Street. On 8 August 1942, during the ghetto deportation action, he was caught by the Germans and put on a train to Treblinka. He managed to jump out of the train and return to the ghetto. He was a Bund representative on the Coordination Commission of the Jewish National Committee (Polish: Komisja Koordynacyjna Żydowskiego Komitetu Narodowego) and on the political bureau of the Jewish Fighting Organization (Polish: Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa). In 1942, he worked in the brush factory at Franciszka Street.

Blum participated in the ghetto uprising in April 1943. On 10 May, together with other fighters, he left the ghetto through the sewers. He made his way to the flat of Vladka Meed, who was on the “Aryan side”, at 2 Barokowa Street, and hid there. The caretaker of the building discovered him and called the police. While trying to escape, Blum fell from the third floor and broke his legs. He was taken to the police station at Daniłowiczowska Street and later handed over to the Gestapo and interrogated at Aleja Szucha. It was there that he most likely was murdered.  

His wife, Luba, as well as his daughter Wiktoria (Aviva) and son Aleksander, survived the war by hiding outside of Warsaw from January 1943.

In the Jewish cemetery on ul. Okopowa in Warsaw, there is a symbolic grave for Abraham Blum in the Bund section. 

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