[Congressional Bills 109th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[S. Res. 245 Agreed to Senate (ATS)]
109th CONGRESS
1st Session
S. RES. 245
Recognizing the life and accomplishments of Simon Wiesenthal.
_______________________________________________________________________
IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES
September 21, 2005
Mr. Schumer (for himself, Mr. Coleman, Mrs. Boxer, Mrs. Feinstein, Mr.
Reid, Mr. Bingaman, Mr. Wyden, Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Lautenberg, Ms.
Mikulski, Mr. Kennedy, Ms. Stabenow, Mr. Lieberman, Mr. Johnson, Mr.
Harkin, Mr. Kohl, Mrs. Murray, Mr. Feingold, Mr. Dodd, Mr. Brownback,
Mr. Smith, Mr. Rockefeller, Mr. Voinovich, Mr. Biden, Mr. Corzine, Mr.
Allen, Mr. Inhofe, Mr. Carper, Mr. Graham, Mr. DeWine, Mr. Nelson of
Florida, Mr. Levin, Mr. Grassley, Mr. Burr, Mr. Alexander, Mr. McCain,
Mr. Nelson of Nebraska, Mrs. Hutchison, Mr. Sarbanes, Mr. Salazar, Mr.
Cornyn, Mr. Hagel, Mr. Talent, Mr. Conrad, Ms. Snowe, Mr. Santorum, Mr.
Durbin, and Mr. Leahy) submitted the following resolution; which was
considered and agreed to
_______________________________________________________________________
RESOLUTION
Recognizing the life and accomplishments of Simon Wiesenthal.
Whereas Simon Wiesenthal was born on December 31, 1908, to Jewish merchants in
Buczacz, in what is now the Lvov Oblast section of the Ukraine;
Whereas after he was denied admission to the Polytechnic Institute in Lvov
because of quota restrictions on Jewish students, Simon Wiesenthal
received his degree in engineering from the Technical University of
Prague in 1932;
Whereas Simon Wiesenthal worked in an architectural office until he was forced
to close his business and become a mechanic in a bedspring factory,
following the Russian army's occupation of Lvov and purge of Jewish
professionals;
Whereas following the German occupation of Ukraine in 1941, Simon Wiesenthal was
initially detained in the Janwska concentration camp near Lvov, after
which he and his wife were assigned to the forced labor camp serving the
Ostbahn Works, which was the repair shop for Lvov's Eastern Railroad;
Whereas in August of 1942, Simon Wiesenthal's mother was sent to the Belzec
death camp as part of Nazi Germany's ``Final Solution'', and by the end
of the next month 89 of his relatives had been killed;
Whereas with the help of the Polish Underground Simon Wiesenthal was able to
help his wife escape the Ostbahn camp in 1942, and in 1943 was himself
able to escape just before German guards began executing inmates, but he
was recaptured the following year and sent to the Janwska camp;
Whereas following the collapse of the German eastern front, the SS guards at
Janwska took Simon Wiesenthal and the remaining camp survivors and
joined the westward retreat from approaching Russian forces;
Whereas Simon Wiesenthal was 1 of the few survivors of the retreat to
Mauthausen, Austria and was on the brink of death, weighing only 99
pounds, when Mauthausen was liberated by American forces on May 5, 1945;
Whereas after surviving 12 Nazi prison camps, including 5 death camps,
Wiesenthal chose not to return to his previous occupation, and instead
dedicated himself to finding Nazi war criminals and bringing them to
justice;
Whereas following the liberation of Mauthausen, Simon Wiesenthal began
collecting evidence of Nazi activity for the War Crimes Section of the
United States Army, and after the war continued these efforts for the
Army's Office of Strategic Services and Counter-Intelligence Corps;
Whereas Simon Wiesenthal would also go on to head the Jewish Central Committee
of the United States Zone of Austria, a relief and welfare organization;
Whereas Simon Wiesenthal and his wife were reunited in 1945, and had a daughter
the next year;
Whereas the evidence supplied by Wiesenthal was utilized in the United States
Zone war crime trials;
Whereas, after concluding his work with the United States Army in 1947, Simon
Wiesenthal and others opened and operated the Jewish Historical
Documentation Center in Linz, Austria, for the purpose of assembling
evidence for future Nazi trials, before closing the office and providing
its files to the Yad Vashem Archives in Israel in 1954;
Whereas despite his heavy involvement in relief work and occupational education
for Soviet refugees, Simon Wiesenthal tenaciously continued his pursuit
of Adolf Eichmann, who had served as the head of the Gestapo's Jewish
Department and supervised the implementation of the ``Final Solution'';
Whereas in 1953, Simon Wiesenthal acquired evidence that Adolf Eichmann was
living in Argentina and passed this information to the Government of
Israel;
Whereas this information, coupled with information about Eichmann's whereabouts
in Argentina provided to Israel by Germany in 1959, led to Eichmann's
capture by Israeli agents, trial and conviction in Israel, and execution
on May 31, 1961;
Whereas following Eichmann's capture, Wiesenthal opened a new Jewish
Documentation Center in Vienna, Austria, for the purpose of collecting
and analyzing information to aid in the location and apprehension of war
criminals;
Whereas Karl Silberbauer, the Gestapo officer who arrested Anne Frank, Franz
Stangl, the commandant of the Treblinka and Sobibor concentration camps
in Poland, and Hermine Braunsteiner, who had supervised the killings of
several hundred children at Majdanek, are among the approximately 1,100
war criminals found and brought to justice as a result of Simon
Wiesenthal's investigative, analytical, and undercover operations;
Whereas Simon Wiesenthal bravely forged ahead with his mission of promoting
tolerance and justice in the face of danger and resistance, including
numerous threats and the bombing of his home in 1982;
Whereas the Simon Wiesenthal Center was established in 1977, to focus on the
prosecution of Nazi war criminals, commemorate the events of the
Holocaust, teach tolerance education, and promote Middle East affairs;
Whereas the Simon Wiesenthal Center monitors and combats the growth of neo-Nazi
activity in Europe and keeps watch over concentration camp sites to
ensure that the memory of the Holocaust and the sanctity of those sites
are preserved;
Whereas the Simon Wiesenthal Center played a pivotal role in convincing foreign
governments to pass laws enabling the prosecution of Nazi war criminals;
Whereas throughout his lifetime, Simon Wiesenthal has had many honors and awards
bestowed upon him, including decorations from the Austrian and French
resistance movements, the Dutch Freedom Medal, the Luxembourg Freedom
Medal, the United Nations League for the Help of Refugees Award, the
French Legion of Honor, and the United States Congressional Gold Medal,
which was presented to him by President James Carter in 1980;
Whereas President Ronald W. Reagan once remarked, ``For what Simon Wiesenthal
represents are the animating principles of Western civilization since
the day Moses came down from Sinai: the idea of justice, the idea of
laws, the idea of the free will.'';
Whereas President George H. W. Bush has stated that Simon Wiesenthal, ``is our
living embodiment of remembrance. The two pledges of Simon Wiesenthal's
life inspire us all--`Never forget' and `Never again'.'';
Whereas President William Clinton has remarked of Simon Wiesenthal, ``To those
who know his story, one of miraculous survival and of relentless pursuit
of justice, the answer is apparent. From the unimaginable horrors of the
Holocaust, only a few voices survived, to bear witness, to hold the
guilty accountable, to honor the memory of those who were killed. Only
if we heed these brave voices can we build a bulwark of humanity against
the hatred and indifference that is still all too prevalent in this
world of ours.''; and
Whereas, at the end of a life dedicated to the pursuit of justice and advocacy
for victims of the Holocaust, Simon Wiesenthal passed away on September
20, 2005, at the age of 96: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That the Senate--
(1) expresses its most sincere condolences to the family
and friends of Simon Wiesenthal;
(2) recognizes the life and accomplishments of Simon
Wiesenthal, who, after surviving the Holocaust, spent more than
50 years helping to bring Nazi war criminals to justice and was
a vigorous opponent of anti-Semitism, neo-Nazism, and racism;
and
(3) recognizes and commends Simon Wiesenthal's legacy of
promoting tolerance, his tireless efforts to bring about
justice, and the continuing pursuit of these ideals.
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