Clara Rudnick

1924 - 2025

Clara Rudnick

June 1, 1924 - November 16, 2025

Clara Rudnick, one of the most joyful residents of Glens Falls and Queensbury since 1952, died Sunday, November 16, 2025 at the age of 101. Her health had declined only recently, as she was a spry person at her 100th birthday party and was seen dancing at a family wedding, in 2018 the same year she was feted by Glens Falls in its Memorial Day Parade. Her catch phrases were infectious: "I live in a Paradise!" and "I'm a lucky girl."

Lucky, indeed, to have survived Nazi concentration and work camps, but Clara's ingenuity, work ethic and pluck determined not just her survival, but her success in building a new life in the United States after immigrating in 1949 with husband Abe and twin toddler boys. The young family lived in Troy until moving to Glens Falls, where Abe developed a successful plumbing and heating supply business. In 1963, they moved to Queensbury Gardens as Abe and his then-business partner, the late Lewis DeAngelis, began building garden apartments on a generous tract of land. Abe and Clara each cherished their ability to remain in their home until death. That was possible for Clara because grandson Charlie Rudnick and his partner, Monique Cariddi, cared for her daily.

Caila Charmatz was born on June 1, 1924 in the Polish town of Swieciany (now Svencionys, Lithuania) 52 miles north of Vilnius (called 'Vilna 'by many Jewish communities). Seized by the Soviet Union in 1939, the area was soon flooded with Jewish refugees fleeing German-occupied Poland. Many met with violence at native Lithuanians 'hands, followed by the arrival of German killing units in mid-1941. Caila's elder brother was seized in July and murdered in a nearby forest. Her twin brother would later meet a similar fate, followed by her mother and two sisters, who were among approximately 8,000 Jews forced into a deserted military camp called Poligon near their town, and murdered at the site in September 1941. Caila escaped only because she hid overnight in the community bath's unlit oven, at her father's direction.

Father and daughter then hid in a series of Polish farm families 'homes until they too were captured. Sent first to the Vilna ghetto, each was dispatched separately as slave laborers to work camps in 1943. In one camp, Caila sewed fur coats by hand; at the next, she poured acid to manufacture batteries. At a farm camp, her hand shot up as a volunteer when someone was needed to milk a cow (she'd never done such a thing, but volunteering might prolong survival). As Soviet troops advanced in 1945, she and other women were forced to pull sleighs for Germans fleeing Stutthof. After several weeks, those troops locked the women in a barn, where they were discovered and liberated by Russian troops on March 11 that year.

With other women, Caila traveled to the Polish city of Lodz, which had become a gathering place for Jewish Holocaust survivors to place their name on a wall in the hope of finding loved ones. There, she persuaded a Polish woman to entrust her with meat "on spec," which she sold for a profit to repay her lender, feed herself and buy a scarf to cover her head. In Lodz, she also found a cousin and met Abe Rudnick. They wed in November 1945.

Caila became "Clara" upon immigrating to Troy, N. Y., in 1949. Sponsored by Abe's uncle in that city, Clara stoked his wife's wood-burning cooking stove and kept a goat in the backyard in her first years.

After moving to Glens Falls, she learned to drive but also loved to walk her twin boys to Crandall Library. Decades later, she still spoke gratefully of the public library, just as she spoke appreciatively of Juliet Chapman, the Glens Falls doyenne who donated her Victorian home in 1968 for use as a historical museum. (Mrs. Chapman became a valued neighbor and tenant at Queensbury Gardens.)

Clara became a willing speaker about her experiences in World War II to diverse groups of students, churchgoers and Holocaust researchers. In 2014, she donated materials from her speeches to Crandall Library's Folklife Center. A valued member of Congregation Shaaray Tefila, she also volunteered at the synagogue's bingo nights in earlier days. She remained an avid subscriber of The Post-Star and read The Chronicle until her energies ebbed this year.

Quite simply, Clara loved her community nearly as much as she loved her family. Preceded in death by Abe and grandson Eli Rudnick, she is survived by her three sons, Joseph (Patty), Marvin (Katie) and Howie; grandchildren Ben Rudnick, Virginia Rudnick Balch (Mark) and Charlie Rudnick (Monique) and Beau Balch, the infant great-grandson she met and held on her 101st birthday in June.

Services will be held Tuesday, November 18, 2025 from 12 to 2 p.m. at Singleton Sullivan Potter Funeral Home, 407 Bay Road, Queensbury, N.Y.

In lieu of flowers, friends might consider a donation to Congregation Shaaray Tefila.

For those who wish online condolences can be made to the family by visiting www.sbfuneralhome.com