Josie’s Story: From 19th-century Sitka to her escape from the Holocaust

Josie Rudolph Thurnauer through the years 1874-1938. (Photos provided by family)

What did it take to be among Alaska’s first pioneers? Who were the colonists rushing north in 1867 after the United States purchased Russia’s interest in Alaska?

The first white settler girl born inside the muddy wooden fortress of American Sitka was named Josephine Rudolph — Josie, as she is remembered by her descendants today. Her parents were not the “hardy Nordic pioneers” praised by politicians of that era. They were immigrants to the New World, German Jews who had come to the outermost frontier to find economic opportunity and escape the oppressive antisemitism of Bavaria.

Josie Rudolph’s remarkable life story, set in an era of worldwide migration, colonial ambition and the taking of the coastal forests from the Tlingit kwáans, is a new and different take on the familiar tale of modern Alaska’s birth.

Today’s sensibilities may judge harshly the collision of cultures in 19th-century Sitka. The consequences of that time echo down to our own. But Josie Rudolph’s story is a reminder, as well, that history’s many twists and turns are not all deplorable.

Because 69 years later, when Alaska’s first pioneer daughter was an elderly Jewish widow trapped in Nazi Germany, her one hope for escape turned out to be the circumstances of her birth in the coastal rainforest of the Sheet’ká Kwáan.

— Tom Kizzia

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Part 1: Birthplace

Sitka, 1869, a time of colonial ambition, worldwide migration and the seizing of the majestic coastal forests from the Tlingit kwáans.

Coming this week:

Part 2: The settlers’ colony

A secret agent arrives in America’s muddy northern frontier outpost.

Part 3: ‘All the territory and dominion possessed’

The Army trains its cannons on the Sheet’ká Kwáan as the United States takes control of Tlingit lands and waters.

Part 4: Jews of the frontier

A child is born into the community of Jewish immigrants who found their way from the Old World to America’s northern frontier.

Part 5: Alaska’s first boomers

Famous visitors, prejudice and white man’s justice as the boom goes bust.

Part 6: Stumbling stones

In Germany, Josie Rudolph watches the rise of the Nazis and becomes trapped, her family’s home and wealth stripped away.

Part 7: The Alaska plan

While the U.S. refuses to open the Alaska territory to German Jews fleeing the Nazis, Josie Rudolph develops her own Alaska plan, based on her birth in the coastal rainforest of the Sheet’ká Kwáan.

Part 8: A trip to Alaska

Many years later, her descendants travel to Sitka in search of their pioneer roots.