[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 11 (Thursday, January 22, 2015)]
[Senate]
[Pages S425-S426]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




    SENATE RESOLUTION 35--COMMEMORATING THE 70TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE 
 LIBERATION OF THE AUSCHWITZ EXTERMINATION CAMP IN NAZI-OCCUPIED POLAND

  Ms. MIKULSKI (for herself, Mr. Cardin, and Mr. Kirk) submitted the 
following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Foreign 
Relations:

                               S. Res. 35

       Whereas on January 27, 1945, the Auschwitz extermination 
     camp in Nazi-occupied Poland was liberated by Allied Forces 
     during World War II after almost 5 years of murder, rape, and 
     torture at the camp;
       Whereas 1,100,000 innocent civilians were murdered at the 
     Auschwitz extermination camp;
       Whereas nearly 1,300,000 innocent civilians were deported 
     to Auschwitz from their homes across Eastern and Western 
     Europe, particularly from Hungary, Poland, and France;
       Whereas 1,000,000 of the civilians who perished at the camp 
     were Jews, along with 100,000 non-Jewish Poles, Roma and 
     Sinti individuals, Soviet prisoners of war, Jehovah's 
     Witnesses, gay men and women, and other ethnic minorities;
       Whereas these civilians included farmers, tailors, 
     seamstresses, factory hands, accountants, doctors, teachers, 
     small-business owners, clergy, intellectuals, government 
     officials, and political activists;
       Whereas these civilians were subjected to torture, forced 
     labor, starvation, rape, medical experiments, and being 
     separated from loved ones;
       Whereas the names of many of these civilians who perished 
     have been lost forever;
       Whereas the Auschwitz extermination camp symbolizes the 
     extraordinary brutality of the Holocaust;
       Whereas the people of the United States must never forget 
     the terrible crimes against humanity committed at the 
     Auschwitz extermination camp;
       Whereas the people of the United States must educate future 
     generations to promote understanding of the dangers of 
     intolerance in order to prevent similar injustices from 
     happening again; and
       Whereas commemoration of the liberation of the Auschwitz 
     extermination camp will instill in all people of the United 
     States a greater awareness of the Holocaust: Now, therefore, 
     be it
       Resolved, That the Senate--
       (1) commemorates January 27, 2015, as the 70th anniversary 
     of the liberation of the Auschwitz extermination camp by 
     Allied Forces during World War II;
       (2) calls on all people of the United States to remember 
     the 1,100,000 innocent victims murdered at the Auschwitz 
     extermination camp as part of the Holocaust;
       (3) honors the legacy of the survivors of the Holocaust and 
     of the Auschwitz extermination camp; and
       (4) calls on the people of the United States to continue to 
     work toward tolerance, peace, and justice and to end all 
     genocide and persecution.

  Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I wish to take this opportunity to bring 
to my Senate colleagues' attention the most momentous day that will 
occur next week.
  Next week, on January 27, it will be the 70th anniversary of the 
liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp--70 years since the 
liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp. It was a triumph for 
the allies, but a melancholy day as the world began to see the films 
and photographs coming out of this hellhole.
  I stand here today to remember and remind us all that, more than any 
other word, Auschwitz is synonymous with evil.
  As someone who is very proud of her Polish-American heritage, I 
visited Auschwitz. I wanted to see it when I had the chance to learn 
more about my own heritage, and I wanted to see what happened there so 
that I would remember. I rise today so that the world remembers what 
happened there, and then the heroic effort of the allied forces, joined 
together, to be able to save Europe and save Western civilization.
  I have submitted a resolution honoring those who survive even today, 
and those who were lost, that would remind us that we need to work 
always for tolerance, peace, and justice, and, always, to end genocide.
  The harms of Auschwitz are incomprehensible and indescribable. The 
numbers are grim and even ghoulish. Over 1 million people--men, women, 
and children--lost their lives at Auschwitz. Ninety percent were Jews, 
hundreds of thousands were children, and it was the largest of any of 
the death camps.
  Auschwitz was first created as an internment camp for Polish 
dissidents, for hundreds of thousands of Poles who were not Jewish but 
were murdered alongside the Jews of Auschwitz.
  In occupied Poland, a Nazi governor named Hans Frank proclaimed that, 
``Poles will become slaves of the Third Reich.''
  But Auschwitz went far beyond the Poles, because the German 
authorities brought in people from throughout Europe. Who were the 
people who came? They were teachers, they were politicians, they were 
professors, they were artists--they were even Catholic priests. They 
were executed or barely survived. These are the stories of heroism that 
arise from the horrors.
  Many Poles risked their lives to save Jews. I am reminded of the 
story of Irena Sendler, who was a young social worker in Warsaw. She 
smuggled 200 Jewish children out of the ghetto into a safe house. The 
Gestapo arrested her in 1943. They first tortured her and then 
condemned her to death.
  Jan Karski, working for the Polish Government, went on to be a leader 
of solidarity in the founding of the new Polish democratic government. 
In working, he visited the Warsaw ghetto and did much to liberate 
people.
  But this is not a story of numbers or statistics or naming of heroes. 
It is a story I am going to tell about myself.
  In the late 1970s, as a brandnew Congresswoman, I traveled to Poland. 
I wanted to see my heritage, and I visited the small--really small--
village that my family came from, where my great-grandmother left 
Poland as a 16-year-old girl to come to the United States to meet up 
with her brother and begin a new life, with little money in her pocket 
but big dreams in her heart. The story of America is the story of our 
family. Landing in Baltimore when women didn't even have the right to 
vote, she came in 1886--exactly 100 years to the year I became a U.S. 
Senator. So I wanted to go back to see where we came from to really 
know our story even better. But I also wanted to see the dark side of 
the history of Poland, and I went to Auschwitz.
  Touring the concentration camp was an experience for me that was 
searing. Even today I carry it not only in my mind's eye, but I carry 
it in my heart. I could not believe the experience. The Presiding 
Officer knows me. I am a fairly strong, resilient person. I think we 
have even shared stories that I was a child abuse worker. I have seen 
tough things. But I wasn't prepared for what I saw that day.
  As I walked through the gate of Auschwitz, to see the sign--that 
despicable sign--of welcome there. And then we toured--well, you don't 
tour. It is not a tourist site, it is a memorial. It is sacred ground. 
It is not a tourist site. But as we walked through, we saw the chambers 
where people had died.

[[Page S426]]

  I even went to a particular cell of a Father Kolbe, a Catholic priest 
who in the death camp gave his life to protect a Jewish member there. 
When they were ready to shoot him, Father Kolbe stepped forward to 
offer his life instead. Father Kolbe, in my faith tradition, has been 
canonized a saint for his heroic effort to show that he was willing to 
martyr himself for another human being, and in the belief that God was 
there in what he wanted to do.
  But as I walked through there--and I saw hard things, tough things, 
wrenching things, repulsive, repugnant things. But then I got to the 
part that really broke my heart. I got to the part about the children. 
Pictures of children--little children. Not that any child's age is 
there. And then I saw the bins--the bins of the children's shoes: bins 
piled up with little shoes size 2, size 3, size 4, lace-up shoes, 
because they were the shoes they had in the 1930s and 1940s. And then I 
saw their suitcases. Then over in another corner I saw the eyeglasses 
that were taken from them and broken into pieces. Then I saw the 
pictures of the mothers.
  I will tell you, I became unglued. I had to step away. Even today, 
when I tell this story, my voice chokes up because it shook my very 
soul.
  So as we move into this commemoration--because it is both a 
celebration and a commemoration--a celebration of the liberation but a 
commemoration of what went on. I knew when I left Auschwitz--I knew and 
I understood why, first of all, we should never have genocide in the 
world again.
  The second thing, and also so crucial to my views, is that there 
always needed to be a homeland for the Jewish people--why we always 
need an Israel, why it has to be there, survivable for the ages, and 
for all who will seek a home there and seek refuge there. This is why I 
worked so hard on these issues in terms of the support for Israel, the 
end of genocide, and also the gratitude for all the people who fought--
for the people who fought in the underground, for people who fought in 
the resistance, for people who tried to participate in the famous 
uprisings; to thank God also for the other fighters--the ones who in 
the camp gave whatever they could to keep other camp members going; and 
then, for the allied troops, led by the United States of America--
there, where we stood together, we stood and stared evil down; and 
then, when we opened up the doors of Auschwitz, for freedom and the 
ability to come out, though barely alive--that it was indeed an 
historic moment.
  We don't want that history ever to repeat itself, where there has to 
be a liberation of a death camp.
  I would also take this opportunity to salute the allies and all the 
American people who made us victorious in World War II.
  Let's say God bless the United States of America. And let's work 
together for a safe and secure Middle East.

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