Nordic American Voices Nordic Heritage Museum Interview of Ulla

Nordic American Voices Nordic Heritage Museum Interview of Ulla Rudd April 19, 2014 Seattle, Washington Interviewers: Gordon Strand; Michelle Eastman; Jette Bunch; Dan Kaylor Michelle Eastman: [0:10] This is an interview for the Nordic American Voices oral history project. Today is April 19, and I’ll be interviewing Ulla Rudd. We are at the Nordic Heritage Museum in Seattle, Washington. My name is Michelle Eastman, and I will be working today with… Gordon Strand: [0:33] Gordon Strand. Jette Bunch: [0:34] Jette Bunch. Dan Kaylor: [0:35] Dan Kaylor. Ulla Rudd: [0:39] Hi. Gordon: [0:40] So, will you give us your name, date of birth- year you were born, where you were born, and then we want you to start with your immigration story. Ulla: [0:49] Okay. My name is Ulla Rudd Bernadelli. I was born the 20 th of November, 1940, in Copenhagen. Since it was during the occupation, I was born at home. My sister two years older than me was born at the hospital close by. I would like to talk about my parents a little bit. Michelle: [1:19] What were the names of your parents? Ulla: [0:21] My father’s name was Harry William Christiansen. My mother was Elna Viola, and originally Petersen. There’s a lot of Petersens on my father’s side going way, way back. I have the Nordic American Voices Page 1 of 30 genealogy papers to 1750, and there were Petersens based on my great-grandmother. But anyway, we were Christiansen. In Denmark, that was considered a little better than being a Christensen. I’m just pointing that out. [1:57] Anyway, we lived in a small apartment that was part of a co-op, called… I’ll say it in Danish: [Danish words 2:09 – 2:12]. And my parents were members. When we were born- when my sister and myself were born, they signed us up to be members so that hopefully someday when we were adults, we would have been members long enough to get an apartment. It was very, very sparse with apartments in those days. Everybody we knew lived in an apartment, except for the families that lived out of the city. [2:46] We lived in Bispebjerg, which is about fifteen minutes by streetcar from the center of Copenhagen. It was a very open area. We had lots of greenery. It was an almost new building, and we lived on the second floor. It was a walkup. My father was a tailor, and my mother had the same training that he did, although she was called a seamstress, but she was actually a tailor as well. They went through four years of apprenticeship to become a tailor. [3:24] And my father had very different kinds of ideas. He did not believe in capitalism, for instance. He felt you would be taking advantage of another person if they worked for you. So he did everything himself, with my mother’s help. She basically never worked outside of the home. She helped him. So we actually had very small living quarters, because he took the one bedroom and used it for his workshop, basically. And we only had two other rooms, and a kitchen. [4:07] I had my sister; my brother was five years younger, and myself, and the three of us lived in that other room. My parents lived in a pullout sofa in the living room. There was a small balcony that my mother loved. We didn’t feel like our circumstances were any worse, or different than anybody else that we knew at that time. But I’m talking about here after the war. [4:37] Now, I want to get into a little bit during the war, because I do remember some things. One thing I personally remember is that right across the street from us was a brand new school that went all the way from the beginning through high school. And they had a big, huge play area with a lawn. And the school was kind of unique, because it was cut right down the middle. Girls were only on Nordic American Voices Page 2 of 30 one side, and boys were only on the other side. So basically we never had school or sat in a classroom with any of the boys. We were not allowed on their side; they were not allowed on our side. In the middle, we had a big, huge hall room, like a ballroom where all announcements and so on took place. [5:34] Anyway, on this big, huge playfield, the Germans had bunkers. They had their helmets on, and they had guards outside with guns- with the big, long guns with the bayonets at the end. And I remember that. And we had a very free, sort of… We could run around. Basically, we had a very big play area. I don’t remember being restricted. And we had lots of kids in the area there that we could play with. [6:12] So when I was about three years old, we would go over to the bunkers, and tease the Germans, you might say. We said, “Nazi swine,” and they would point their guns at us, and we would squeal and run away. I mean, it was like a big game. I mean, they could have shot us, I suppose. Anyway, that’s one thing I remember personally. [6:41] My father was in the underground. What that consisted of was not so much sabotage as delivering news- carrying on the news. We lived in… People that came to our apartment only introduced themselves by first name, and it was not their real name. They would then deliver news. My father would carry it on and deliver it to somebody else. [7:18] We had a small electric… like a box. There was a hollowed-out area behind it, and that’s where the papers were kept. And I remember that we were told, even as young as we were, “No matter what ever happens, you never tell the Germans about that place.” And I knew that. I mean, I was only five years old, or four-and-a-half when the war was over, but I knew that you never… I mean, they could do anything to any one of us, and we would never tell them where that place was. [7:57] So that’s one thing I remember. Another thing I remember is that when the Germans wanted to round up the Jews, we had a Jewish lady that lived across the street with her daughter. And my father… We had them in our apartment for one week, until they could get across to Sweden. And her name was Judy. I remember that. And I remember how… It’s kind of family history, lore- how proud we were of being able to do this. Nordic American Voices Page 3 of 30 [8:35] So you know, we participated in resisting the Germans. Another memory I have is standing by, looking out… Of course, I remember the black curtains coming down every night. I remember the sirens, and we’d all run down in the basement. And I’d see all my neighbors in their nightclothes, and they’d bring their comforters. I remember sitting around the walls with comforters, seeing all our neighbors in whatever they were wearing when the sirens came down, and it was kind of fun. It was just normal to me. That’s what you do. [Laughter] [9:19] And I remember once during the daytime there was a raid, and I was standing by the window with my mother, looking out. We could see into Copenhagen from there, and we saw the flights… the bombers coming in and dropping bombs. And of course, this was American and English dropping bombs on Copenhagen because they were trying to get the Nazi headquarters. They were not trying to get the Danes. We were definitely resisting the Germans, and they knew that. But what happened, they had an accident, and they dropped bombs on a Catholic school. Lots of children were killed. Hundreds of children were killed. [10:11] That I didn’t remember, but I remember hearing about it. Then after I was born… I’ll get back to the beginning. My mother was not well. She always had problems with her thyroid, and she had a goiter. Three times in her life she had an operation where they basically would cut her from one end to the other. She had to be awake, and they would remove part of the goiter, and it always would come back. [10:46] But anyway, after I was born, she was very weak. They went by bicycle to my father’s sister, who lived out of Copenhagen. And they went past the German checkpoint. I was a brand-new baby. I was probably only six weeks old, or whatever. And my mother fainted, and I fell out of the basket. So basically, that explains it, I guess. [Laughter] My sister was on the back of my father’s bicycle, since they only had two at a time. [11:21] So my aunt had me and actually took care of me for one full year. So I was always very, very close to my aunt. She was really like my second mother. Later on when I was a child, I spent all my summers at her place. She had a beautiful big house.

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