[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 119 (Wednesday, September 21, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10303-S10304]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         SUBMITTED RESOLUTIONS

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  SENATE RESOLUTION 245--RECOGNIZING THE LIFE AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF 
                            SIMON WIESENTHAL

  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:

                              S. Res. 245

       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 Germany 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

[[Page S10304]]

       (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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