Boschwitz, Rudy, 1930-

Rudolph Eli Boschwitz (born November 7, 1930) is a German-born American businessman and politician. A member of the Republican Party, he served as a U.S. Senator from Minnesota between December 1978 and January 1991.

Born to a Jewish family in Berlin, Weimar Germany, his family fled from Nazi Germany when Boschwitz was three years old, settling in New Rochelle, New York, where he attended public schools before going on to the Pennington School in Pennington, New Jersey. Boschwitz attended Johns Hopkins University before earning B.S. and J.D. degrees from New York University. He was admitted to the New York State bar in 1954 and the Wisconsin bar in 1959. Boschwitz served in the United States Army Signal Corps from 1954 to 1955. In October 1963, he founded a plywood and home improvement retailer, Plywood Minnesota, which later became Home Valu Interiors; Boschwitz remains the company's chairman. Between 1971 and 1978, he served as a Republican National Committeeman. He was well known in Minnesota for operating a "flavored milk" booth at the Minnesota State Fair.

Boschwitz was elected as an Independent-Republican to the United States Senate in November 1978 and was subsequently appointed on December 30, 1978, to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Wendell Anderson, who was appointed to fill the seat after Walter Mondale was elected Vice President two years earlier. Boschwitz voted in favor of the bill establishing Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a federal holiday and the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1987 (as well as to override President Reagan's veto). Boschwitz voted in favor of the nomination of Robert Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court. Re-elected in 1984, he was narrowly defeated in 1990 by Carleton College professor Paul Wellstone; Boschwitz lost a 1996 rematch with Wellstone.

In 1991, Boschwitz traveled to Ethiopia as the emissary of President George H. W. Bush. The negotiations Boschwitz led in Ethiopia resulted in Operation Solomon. Over 14,000 Jewish people were airlifted from Ethiopia to Israel. Operation Solomon took twice as many Beta Israel émigrés to Israel as Operation Moses and Operation Joshua combined. He was a top "Bush Pioneer" in 2000, fund-raising $388,193, and a "Bush Ranger" in 2004, raising at least $200,000 for George W. Bush's campaign fund in that election cycle. In 2005, Bush named Boschwitz as the United States Ambassador to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, which met at the U.N. in Geneva, Switzerland. Boschwitz presently serves on the Board of Directors of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, is an AIPAC Board Member, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.