Ruben Jaari (until 1936 Robert Jankeloff; 22 January 1906

Helsinki Helsinki ( or ; ; sv, Helsingfors, ) is the Capital city, capital, primate city, primate, and List of cities and towns in Finland, most populous city of Finland. Located on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, it is the seat of the region of U ...

– 15 August 1991

) was a Finnish businessman and founder of the department store .

Biography

Jaari's parents were Samuel and Lena Jankeloff, and the family – originally from Russia – moved to

in the 1860s. The Jankeloff family maintained clothing shops in

Kamppi Kamppi () is a neighbourhood in the centre of Helsinki, the capital of Finland. The name originally referred to a small area known as the "Kamppi field" (see below), but according to the current official designation, "Kamppi" encompasses a much l ...

and in Annankatu, in central Helsinki. As well as Ruben the Jankeloff family had three other sons: Sender, David, and Fabian (known as Fajo). Sender later emigrated to the United States. During the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

the family moved to

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, but they returned in the 1920s to

Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...

. Ruben Jaari trained as an electrical engineer in France and Germany, changing his surname to Jaari in the 1930s. He founded a store, named Kappa, in 1933 and sold in Vuorikatu with his brother Fajo women's jackets. Fajo was later to found his own business. In 1939 Jaari married Irene Friedländer, a

Latvian Jew The history of the Jews in Latvia dates back to the first Jewish colony established in Piltene in 1571. Jews contributed to Latvia's development until the Northern War (1700–1721), which decimated Latvia's population.R. O. G. Urch. Latvia: ...

whose parents later were murdered in the

Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...

. Ruben and Irene had three children: Rea (b. 1940), who today works as a psychologist in England; Ray (1943–1991), who died in a car accident; and Ralph (b. 1949), who today works in the construction trade in

Tallinn Tallinn () is the most populous and capital city of Estonia. Situated on a bay in north Estonia, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland of the Baltic Sea, Tallinn has a population of 437,811 (as of 2022) and administratively lies in the Harju ' ...

. Pukeva went bankrupt during the Recession of the 1990s, partly due to the construction of Kaisaniemi metro station. Jaari died in 1991, and is buried in the Jewish Cemetery in Helsinki.

Biography

References

Further reading