Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the topic of this Special Order, which is Remembrance of Victims of the Holocaust.…
Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the topic of this Special Order, which is Remembrance of Victims of the Holocaust.
I am particularly grateful to be here tonight with Congressman Lee Zeldin from New York for promoting the restoration of integrity at the Department of Justice and the FBI with a second special counsel.
Today I rise in honor of the days of remembrance of victims of the Holocaust officially designated by President Donald Trump last week. President Donald Trump will always be appreciated for establishing next month the American Embassy to be relocated and established in Jerusalem.
A recent study has found that the knowledge of the atrocities that occurred during the Holocaust is waning as we get further and further removed from the horrible events. The phrase ``We Remember'' is used to emphasize the importance of remembering exactly what happened to ensure that it never happens again.
It is in this context that I stand today, not only in honor of those murdered at the hands of the Nazis during the Holocaust, as well as those who survived, but to continue to speak the truth about what happened there and hope that it never fades from our collective memories, to be never repeated. All citizens should tour the Holocaust Museum here in Washington to learn the shocking truth of Nazi inhumanity.
In 1933, Adolf Hitler ascended to power in Germany not through force but through an appointment to chancellor by the sitting President Paul von Hindenburg. He devised a fictional tale about the need for ethnic purity to be successful. The German people were desperate and susceptible to lies and deceptions, and, sadly, many eventually followed Hitler into the atrocities that followed.
The level of deception Hitler and the Nazis were willing to go to, to gain unilateral authority, was apparent early on. In February of 1933, just a month after Hitler was appointed chancellor, the German Reichstag parliament building was burned, and they immediately blamed it on their opponents. This allowed Hitler to take advantage of this situation and issue a decree that placed constraints on the press and banned political meetings.
By June of the same year, the Nazis declared themselves as the only legal party in Germany, and the Nazis passed a law allowing for forced sterilization of those with a genetic defect. The first openly anti- Semitic law was passed in September 1933, prohibiting Jews from holding land 6 years before the start of World War II.
After German President Paul von Hindenburg, who appointed Hitler as chancellor out of political expediency, passed away, Hitler named himself as fuhrer, gaining the power of both chancellor and President. One of the most shocking aspects of this ascent, looking back, is that Hitler received 90 percent support from German voters who approved of his new powers.
After Hitler took complete control of Germany, the laws persecuting Jewish people escalated rapidly. One month after naming himself the fuhrer, the Nuremberg race laws were decreed. These laws banned interracial marriages between Jews and Germans and established that only those who were German or had German ancestors were able to be citizens. The rights of the Jewish people living in Germany slowly but surely dissipated without much attention from the international community; that is, until the Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, the night of November 10, 1938.
German SS agents and local citizens were encouraged to smash windows of Jewish-owned stores, buildings, and synagogues as the local law enforcement stood by and watched. Although many Germans, especially those who saw the destruction, disapproved, Hitler was able to quell any concerns through his control of the media. This event changed the nature of the German persecution of the Jewish people from economic, political, and social to beatings, incarcerations, and murder.
By January 1939, Hitler issued the most public statement regarding his plans to the German parliament. Hitler's goal, in no uncertain terms, was ``the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.''
In addition to Hitler's domination over the Jewish people in Germany, he began to expand his empire to neighboring European nations. The hostile takeover began in Austria, though the union of the two countries had been a popular concept for decades. Therefore, there was not much resistance originally from the international community.
It took the German invasion of Poland on September 2, 1939, for Britain and France to finally declare war on Nazi Germany. The invasion occurred in collaboration with Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, who had a joint Nazi-Soviet pact with a secret protocol to invade Poland with Nazi and Soviet tanks providing for the partition of Poland. It would take two years for the United States to follow suit and declare war against Germany, after the surprise attack by the Axis partner Japan at Pearl Harbor.
Despite Britain and France declaring war, that did not slow the Nazis advancing across Europe. On April 9, 1940, they invaded Denmark and Norway; and on May 10, they invaded France, Belgium, Holland, and Luxembourg. By June 14, the Nazis were occupying the French capital of Paris.
The start of World War II also coincided with the Nazis' increased brutality against the Jewish people. The same month that Britain and France declared war, Reinhard Heydrich issued instructions for the SS to gather Jews in ghettos. One month later, the Nazis would seal those ghettos so no one, meaning no Jewish person, could escape.
On March 26, 1941, the German Army High Command gave the Reich Main Security Office approval to initiate SS murder squads throughout the eastern front. These squads, known as the Einsatzgruppen, were responsible for murdering the intelligentsia and cultural elite in Poland. This murder squad mainly killed civilians.
Heydrich, upon inspecting the impact of the murder squads on his SS agents, decided these tactics were too costly, demoralizing, and did not kill victims quickly enough. That led the Nazis to increase their use of gas to murder the innocent Jewish people, which caused the death toll to increase exponentially.
By the end of 1941, America was drawn into the war by the surprise murderous attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese, who, at this point, were part of the Axis powers, which included Germany and Italy. On December 11, after Germany declared war on the United States, President Franklin Roosevelt declared war against Germany, declaring: ``Never before has there been a greater challenge to life, liberty, and civilization.''
America then concentrated 90 percent of its resources to defeating Hitler. On January 20, 1942, the Wannsee Conference was held just outside of Berlin, where senior Nazi officials and SS met to coordinate their Final Solution. The Final Solution to the Jewish Question was the official code name for the murder of all Jews within reach, which was not limited to the European continent. This resulted in the deliberate and systematic genocide of the Jewish people.
Operation Reinhard, the deadliest phase of the Holocaust, began the introduction of extermination camps. The goal was mass extermination. This horrific Final Solution was carried out at other execution and concentration camps across Europe. Sadly, the largest was at Auschwitz. Auschwitz I was first constructed to hold Polish political prisoners, who began to arrive in May 1940. The first extermination of prisoners took place in 1941, September. Auschwitz II-Birkenau also went on to become a major site of the Nazi Final Solution.
The conditions in these concentration camps were too horrific to imagine. There was a barbaric selection process upon arrival where only those who were able-bodied and strong would survive the night. The rest were sent to gas chambers. The gas chambers were described clearly in ``The Buchenwald Report.'' An estimated 1.3 million people were sent to Auschwitz, of which at least 1.1 million people were murdered. Around 90 percent of those were Jews. Approximately one in six Jewish people killed in the Holocaust died at that camp.
Mr. Speaker, I now yield to the distinguished Congressman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert), who represents the First District of Texas, to speak for 5 minutes.
Mr. Speaker, I thank Congressman Gohmert for his leadership.
We have been joined by the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Tenney), who has served our country so well on the General Assembly of New York and now here in Congress, Congresswoman Claudia Tenney.
Mr. Speaker, I thank Congresswoman Claudia Tenney very much for her heartfelt presentation, and we appreciate her military family.
While I am concluding, I would like to recognize a few Holocaust survivors in South Carolina. May we never forget their pain and suffering, as well as their family and friends who have become beloved citizens of the State of South Carolina.
Ben Stern, born in 1924 in Kielce, Poland. Ben spent 6 months in the Kielce ghetto, where he was beaten and threatened to be hung for leaving the ghetto to get food for his family. Then he was taken to a forced labor camp called Henrykow, after which he never saw his family again. He then was transferred to Auschwitz, where he was sorted and sent to Birkenau.
After being transferred again due to the Russians closing in, Ben was forced to participate in a death march where all those left standing at the end were murdered. He had fallen over just before those executions because he could no longer walk. Ben was later found by the American Army and rescued weighing 89 pounds but alive and liberated.
Bert Gosschalk, born in 1920 in a little village in Holland. He was a member of the resistance. After a failed resistance attempt to blow up a railway to take away Nazi's access, he and his wife were caught. Bert was then taken to the SS headquarters for questioning. There, he spent all day on his knees without food or water.
While he was being questioned at the SS headquarters, a Dutch resistance group ambushed the German police. To retaliate, the Nazis brought all the prisoners to where the Germans had been ambushed and murdered all of them. Bert came back to discover there were only seven or eight men who survived, and, thankfully, he was one.
Bluma Goldberg, born in Poland in a town called Pinczow. Bluma joined her sister at a labor camp where they stayed for 2 years making bullets, where they worked 12-hour shifts, 7 days a week.
As the Russians moved closer, Bluma was sent to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where disease ran rampant and everyone was covered in lice. After 3 months, Bluma was able to go with her sister Burgau, where they painted numbers on airplanes.
Renee Kolender, born in the city of Bochnia, Poland, in 1926. In 1941, Renee was taken from the Kozienice ghetto to a labor camp in a Polish town called Skarzysko. There, Renee stayed for 3 years with her mother and brother making ammunition.
As the Russians moved closer, Renee was moved to a labor camp closer to Germany where they made parts for machines that made bullets. Eventually, she was rescued by a Jewish policeman, and it was all over.
Pincus Kolender was born in the city of Bochnia, Poland, in 1926. In 1942, Pincus and his brother were take from the ghetto, where they lived for about 2 years, to Auschwitz. When Pincus arrived, he was lined up before the gate to be sorted where he was sent to a camp instead of the crematorium.
Inside the camp, his head was shaved, and he was tattooed with the number ``161253.'' Pincus described the life in the camp, of which he said: ``The hunger was also terrible. We used to search for a potato peel and fight over it. We were constantly, 24 hours a day, always hungry.'' Every few months, a selection occurred where those who looked feeble were sent to the crematorium. Eventually, Pincus was saved by General George Patton's Fifth Army.
Other survivors include: Rudy Herz, born in a very small town called Stommeln on the outskirts of Cologne, Germany, in 1925; Trude Heller, born in Vienna in 1922. She was 15 years old in March 1938 when Hitler took over Austria, and upon coming to America, she served as the First Lady with Mayor Max Heller of the beautiful city of Greenville, South Carolina.
Francine Taylor was born in Poland in 1928. Her family moved to France when she was 2 years old. They were living in Paris on June 14, 1940, when the French capital fell.
Leo Diamantstein, born in Heidelberg, Germany, in 1924.
I am grateful for this opportunity to highlight these people and this important issue during these ``Days of Remembrance,'' and I am hopeful that we will make preserving this history and telling these stories a priority.
We will never forget the lessons we have learned from the horrific tragedy in history. We must protect natural God-given rights and do all in our power to prevent these types of crimes against humanity.
Helping the world to not forget is an extraordinary artist of West Columbia, South Carolina, Mary Burkett, who has produced drawings of the murdered children of the Holocaust. These loving portraits were placed, last week, on display at the Embassy of Israel in Washington by Ambassador Ron Dermer.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.