Rudy Boschwitz

Rudolph Eli "Rudy" Boschwitz (born November 7, 1930) is a German-born American businessman and Republican politician who served as a United States Senator from Minnesota from 1979 to 1991.

Born in Berlin during the final years of the Weimar Republic, Boschwitz immigrated to the United States with his family at age five, settling initially in New Rochelle, New York, where he attended public schools before completing his secondary education at The Pennington School in New Jersey. He earned a B.S. in business from New York University in 1950 and a J.D. from its law school in 1953, followed by service in the U.S. Army Signal Corps. After briefly practicing law, Boschwitz entered the business world, founding Plywood Minnesota in 1963—a chain of retail lumber and home improvement stores that expanded to 68 locations and became known through his distinctive television advertisements—before rebranding as Home Valu Interiors, where he served as chairman.

Rudolph Eli Boschwitz, known as Rudy, was born on November 7, 1930, in Berlin, Germany. He was the son of Eli Boschwitz, a prosperous stockbroker, and Lucy Boschwitz (née Dawidowicz). The Boschwitz family was Jewish, part of Berlin's pre-World War II Jewish community that faced increasing persecution under the rising Nazi regime. Eli Boschwitz's background in finance positioned the family as middle-class, with resources that later facilitated their emigration, though specific details on extended family or siblings remain limited in primary records.

Rudolph Boschwitz, born in Berlin in 1930 to a Jewish family, faced escalating antisemitic persecution following Adolf Hitler's appointment as Chancellor on January 30, 1933. His father, Eli Boschwitz, a judicial official, returned home that day and immediately declared the family would leave Germany permanently, recognizing the dire implications of Nazi rule for Jews.

The Boschwitz family departed Germany in July 1933, when Rudy was two years old, amid the early implementation of discriminatory laws and violence targeting Jews. They sailed to the United States as refugees, arriving to capitalize on America's relative openness to Jewish immigrants before stricter quotas tightened in subsequent years.