[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 26 (Monday, February 25, 2013)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E174-E175]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                REMEMBERING AMBASSADOR MAX M. KAMPELMAN

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. STENY H. HOYER

                              of maryland

                    in the house of representatives

                       Monday, February 25, 2013

  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, last month I lost a dear friend, and our 
nation lost a tireless public servant who spent his career keeping 
Americans--and, indeed, the world--safe from the threat of nuclear war.
  Ambassador Max M. Kampelman never held elected office, and most 
Americans may not know of the impact he had on their security. But he 
played a crucial role in advising leaders from both parties during the 
Cold War and in helping to negotiate the first Strategic Arms Reduction 
Treaty in 1991. He died on January 25 at the age of ninety-two.
  Born in 1920 in New York City, New York, Max was the son of Jewish 
immigrants who taught their son the importance of education and the 
value of hard work. After graduating from New York University in 1940, 
he attended night school there in pursuit of his law degree, which he 
earned in 1945.
  During World War II, Max volunteered for an experimental study on the 
effects of recovering from starvation and malnutrition, the findings of 
which were later used to treat concentration camp survivors and former 
prisoners of war. Following the end of the war, he obtained a master's 
degree and doctorate in political science from the University of 
Minnesota, and while there he began working as an aide to then-mayor of 
Minneapolis Hubert Humphrey.
  When Humphrey was sworn in as a United States Senator in 1949, Max 
came with him to Washington as his legislative counsel. After six years 
with Senator Humphrey, Max went into private law practice and joined 
the Marine Corps Reserves. In 1968, he advised Vice President 
Humphrey's presidential campaign.
  Growing alarmed by the Soviet Union's foreign policies and human 
rights violations in the early 1970s, Max became a proponent of a 
tougher Cold War stance. He was brought on to advise the Reagan 
Administration and led the negotiations for the Madrid Conference on 
Security and Cooperation in Europe that were the key forum in the early 
1980s for raising human rights concerns in the Soviet bloc and that led 
to the release of some prisoners of conscience and refuseniks from the 
U.S.S.R.
  At the Madrid conference and throughout the 1980s, Max Kampelman 
advocated a concept we now take for granted--the notion that human 
rights are an integral element of international security. As former 
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton noted, Max ``advanced with 
unmatched eloquence and effectiveness the precept that respect for 
human rights within nations is essential to cooperation and peace among 
nations.''
  Max was instrumental in the drafting of the first START treaty to 
limit nuclear arms stockpiles at the end of the Cold War, helping to 
ease tensions between the superpowers during the days of communism's 
collapse in the former Soviet Union.
  Testifying to Max's beliefs in putting country before party, and 
indicative of the respect leaders on both sides of the aisle felt for 
him, in 1984 he served concurrently as a foreign

[[Page E175]]

policy advisor for Democratic presidential nominee Walter Mondale and 
as counsel to Edwin Meese III, one of President Reagan's closest aides.
  Throughout his years in Washington, Max left his deep imprint on the 
city and its community. He was a founder of the DC National Bank, a 
chairman of WETA-TV, and founding president of Friends of the National 
Zoo. For many years, Max was an active supporter of Jewish community 
organizations, such as the Anti-Defamation League, the American Friends 
of Lubavitch, and others. In 1989, Max received the Presidential 
Citizens Medal from President Reagan, and, ten years later, President 
Clinton awarded Max the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
  I came to know Max well when I served as Chairman of the Helsinki 
Commission in the 1980s, and we worked together on human rights and 
disarmament issues. In the process, we became great friends. Max led 
the U.S. Delegation to a Human Dimension meeting of the Helsinki 
process in Copenhagen in 1990, where, thanks in no small part to his 
able stewardship, breakthrough achievements were reached on democracy, 
the rule of law, and free and fair elections. A year later, he led a 
U.S. delegation to another Human Dimension meeting in Moscow--on the 
heels of the August 1991 Soviet coup attempt--and negotiated an 
agreement explicitly recognizing that human rights are the direct and 
legitimate concern of all countries.
  Max was a true believer in the power of diplomacy to shape a safer, 
freer, and more just world, and he will be missed terribly by all those 
in Washington and throughout the country who came to know him as I 
did--smart, thoughtful, and creative in the pursuit of a better life 
for all.
  Marjorie, Max's wife of fifty-eight years, passed away in 2007, and 
they were preceded in death by two of their children, David and Anne. 
Max is survived by their three remaining children, Jeffrey, Julia, and 
Sarah, along with five grandchildren.
  I join in saluting Ambassador Max Kampelman's life of service to our 
nation as a diplomat, as a Marine Reserve officer, as a philanthropist, 
and as a model citizen. The furtherance of peace in our world and 
freedom for millions who had suffered behind the Iron Curtain will be 
his lasting legacy.

                          ____________________