[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 116 (Thursday, September 15, 2005)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1882-E1883]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       A TRIBUTE TO EDA KAMINSKI

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. TOM LANTOS-

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                      Thursday, September 15, 2005

  Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to join me in paying 
tribute to the life of a truly extraordinary woman, Eda Kaminski, who 
passed away on September 6, 2005. We celebrate her remarkable life for 
the perseverance, tenacity and grit that helped her survive four German 
concentration camps and the resilience and resourcefulness that allowed 
her to prosper when she immigrated to America.
  Eda was born in the mountain village of Zawoja, Poland on July 22, 
1916. She was married in 1939 to Salek Kunstler in Krakow two days 
before the Germans invaded Poland and began the Second World War. Their 
daughter, Anita was born in 1942 and fortunately was smuggled out 
before the Krakow ghetto was destroyed. Eda and her husband were sent 
to Plaszow. The Germans separated Eda from Salek and later murdered 
him. Eda struggled and survived Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, where many 
of those too sick to work were sent. The camp was liberated by British 
troops in April 1945.
  After the war Mrs. Kaminski found Anita hidden by a Catholic family 
in Krakow. Even though she had a sister who lived outside of London, 
most of Eda's family was killed in the Holocaust. Without resources or 
help, Eda and Anita moved to a Displaced Persons camp in Selb, Germany. 
It was there that she met her husband Reuven Kaminski and finally in 
1949, they immigrated to New York to begin a new life. Their son, 
Harvey Kaminski became a successful financier in the New York area. Her 
daughter, Anita K. Epstein, came to Washington and pursued a successful 
career in government relations.
  Mr. Speaker, her truly incredible and inspiring story was chronicled 
in the Washington Post on September 20, 2003. I ask that the text of 
the article be included in the Congressional Record. Once again, I ask 
my colleagues to join me in honoring her extraordinary life.

[[Page E1883]]

              In the Holocaust, Hide-and-Seek Was No Game

                           (By Reilly Capps)

       Under glass in the new exhibit at the U.S. Holocaust Museum 
     is a letter. It was written in 1943 by Eda Kunstler, a 
     prisoner in Plaszow, Poland, the same forced-labor camp where 
     Schindler's list saved a thousand lives. Eda was hoping to 
     save just one life, her baby daughter's, when she wrote these 
     words to a stranger:
       ``Dear madam,
       ``I beg you, you are a mother as well, save my child. God 
     will reward you and I will pay you as well. Remember that the 
     child has wealthy parents, and that if we survive you will 
     have everything we promised. . . . Give her food and keep her 
     clean. That is all that a child needs. My child is bathed 
     every day at 8:30, is fed and then placed on her side and she 
     will sleep until 5 or 6 AM. She is fed every three hours, a 
     roll dipped in water, 
     or a roll with butter and sugar, a lot of 
     sugar. . . .''
       She prayed her daughter, Anita, would survive. The little 
     girl was born into the Krakow ghetto in late 1942, and so was 
     already a miracle, a little bundle of life amid the canyons 
     of death. Maybe there would be another miracle, Eda thought, 
     and Anita would survive the ghetto's liquidation. Maybe her 
     husband had been right. He was a rational man, the wealthy 
     co-owner of a leather factory, and he told her that babies 
     weren't useful to the Nazis, that the baby would be killed 
     instantly, that the baby's only chance was in hiding. He told 
     her all these things as he pried the little girl from her 
     arms.
       ``I didn't want to give it,'' Eda says now, ``but he took 
     the baby.''
       He slipped the baby in a canvas sack, got in a taxi and 
     headed for the gentile side of town, where a Catholic woman 
     named Zofji Zendler waited. With a fake birth certificate, 
     Zendler changed Anita's name to Anya and passed her off as 
     her own. She even took her to church. Which was how it came 
     to pass one Sunday in Krakow that a 3-month-old Jewish girl 
     was baptized Catholic and therefore saved.
       According to the museum, more than a million children were 
     killed during the Holocaust, but tens of thousands were 
     hidden during the war and thousands of those survived.
       Little Anita is now 60 years old. She's married, has two 
     children of her own, and she cries when she looks at the 
     letter, which is part of ``Life in Shadows: Hidden Children 
     and the Holocaust,'' scheduled to open to the public today. 
     It's written carefully, in Polish. There are no water marks 
     on it, even though her mother was crying as she wrote it.
       ``Each one of us that survived has a story,'' says Anita 
     Epstein, a lobbyist in Washington. ``It is very powerful. 
     It's very strong for me. Too much. I have to do it in 
     pieces.''
       The exhibit is almost entirely little pieces, small things 
     that played a small part in some incredible stories. There's 
     a sweater worn by an 8-year-old girl as she cowered in the 
     sewers for more than a year. A wardrobe in which a small boy 
     hid from inspectors. Words from a diary written by an 
     adolescent girl as she hid in an attic in Amsterdam.
       ``In so many ways, the stories of children's experiences 
     are powerful for everyone--for parents, for children, for the 
     general visitor,'' says museum curator Steven Luckert. ``It 
     deals with so many different emotions: separation, fear, 
     play, education, tough choices.''
       Flora Singer was 10 years old when the German tanks rolled 
     into Belgium. Her cousin Nounou was just a baby. Singer was 
     hidden in a secret apartment and in a convent by the 
     legendary Father Bruno, who saved hundreds of children. But 
     not Nounou.
       ``My mother begged my aunt to let Nounou be hidden, because 
     Father Bruno was willing to hide him also,'' says Singer. She 
     says her mother said to her aunt: ``You can go, but at least 
     let Nounou be hidden.'' My mother could not convince her to 
     go to another place, or let Nounou go with Father Bruno.
       ``The next time my mother came to the apartment with food, 
     maybe five, six days later, the Gestapo had a seal on the 
     door, you know: `Property of the Third Reich.' My mother ran 
     in and grabbed the photos of the family.'' One of those 
     photos is displayed in the new exhibit. It's Singer and 
     Nounou, her hands on his arms. They're all smiles.
       Singer lives in Montgomery County and volunteers at the 
     museum, but life has never been as simple as it was the day 
     that picture was taken.
       ``I am here, and [Nounou] is not, and I still can't believe 
     it, even to this day. I say, `How come I escaped?' It's an 
     enormous feeling of responsibility.''
       For Eda Kunstler, it was an enormous feeling of guilt. She 
     felt guilty in Plaszow, and in Auschwitz, and she thought of 
     her daughter every single day in both places. And then she 
     got to Bergen-Belsen, and she was too tired to think of 
     anything at all.
       Eda survived Bergen-Belsen, survived hunger, survived 
     typhus, even as every member of her family, including her 
     husband, perished. She lives in Queens now, 86 and all alone, 
     but she remembers returning to Poland to look for her only 
     living relative, her daughter.
       She found her on a stoop in Katowice, eating a roll and 
     frankfurter. There were 20 kids hanging around, but Eda could 
     tell right away which girl was hers.
       ``I am your mother,'' she told her daughter.
       ``No, you are not my mother,'' Anita said. ``My mother is 
     inside.''
       Eda cried, because she knew the letter had worked.
       ``Dear Madam, my husband and I are convinced and believe 
     that you will save our wonderful child . . . be her mother 
     and give her love, because I her mother cannot give her 
     anything.''