[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 105 (Wednesday, July 8, 2015)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1019]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      CELEBRATING STEFAN ROZENFELD

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. JERROLD NADLER

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, July 8, 2015

  Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, on July 12, 1940, six-year-old Stefan 
Rozenfeld arrived on the shores of the United States of America with 
his mother and father, after a long and perilous journey from Poland. 
This week, he will celebrate the 75th anniversary of his arrival.
   His journey, albeit encompassing a narrative far too familiar for 
many American Jews, represents a remarkable story of survival and 
courage.
   When they fled their native Poland in January 1940, Stefan Rozenfeld 
and his mother escaped certain death at the hands of the Nazis. Only 
weeks after they departed their home in Lodz, the Jews of Lodz were 
rounded up and crammed into a ghetto that served as a staging ground 
for deportations to Nazi extermination camps. The Rozenfelds made their 
way to Belgium, where they reunited with Stefan's father and secured 
American immigration visas. However, unable to obtain passage to the 
United States before the Nazi invasion of Belgium in May 1940, they 
narrowly evaded the Nazis once again, securing safety in France. But 
when France capitulated to the Nazis in June, 1940, the Rozenfelds were 
trapped. Denied entrance to their last two remaining hopes, Portugal 
and Spain, vulnerable and without anywhere else to turn, Stefan and his 
family seemed destined to fall into the Nazis' murderous hands.
   Portugal, neutral throughout World War II, had closed its borders to 
Jewish refugees. It was only the actions taken by an exceedingly 
courageous diplomat, Aristides de Sousa Mendes, the Portuguese consul 
in Bordeaux, which permitted the Rozenfelds, along with tens of 
thousands of other refugees, to successfully flee the Nazis. Despite a 
government directive strictly prohibiting the issuing of visas to Jews, 
Sousa Mendes instructed his vice-consuls to issue Portuguese visas to 
anyone who petitioned for one, regardless of nationality or religion. 
Yet, in saving as many as 30,000 lives, Sousa Mendes sacrificed his own 
career and livelihood. Put on trial by the Portuguese government, the 
formerly high-ranking diplomat was convicted and forced into 
retirement, tarnishing his reputation and leaving him impoverished.
   While Sousa Mendes was unjustly blacklisted and punished, the 
Rozenfelds were able to escape to Portugal and then to the United 
States, where they landed in Hoboken, New Jersey on July 12, 1940. 
Settling in Queens, New York, Stefan's father started a company that 
dubbed and translated foreign films for American audiences. The company 
became an important component of the American film industry, most 
notably dubbing the Vittorio De Sica film, ``Two Women,'' which starred 
Sophia Loren. After graduating from Stuyvesant High School in downtown 
Manhattan and Perdue University in Indiana, Stefan joined his father's 
company. In 1958, he married Linda Schoengold, a childhood friend he 
had known since he was eight years old and with whom he had four 
children: Julie, Laurie, Paul, and Leah. After raising the children in 
New Rochelle, where Linda volunteered in the community and worked to 
encourage voter participation, Stefan and Linda today live in active 
retirement, yet make sure to return every summer to Pine Lake Park, 
where they first met. Stefan maintains his lifelong passion for 
classical music through his extensive collection of recordings and the 
series of concerts he and Linda host for friends. Despite having faced 
incredible adversity, the Rozenfeld family, with the help of the heroic 
Aristides de Sousa Mendes, survived and managed to thrive, embodying 
the very ethos of the American dream.
   After Aristides de Sousa Mendes died in disgrace in 1954, his name 
was largely forgotten. Many of the refugees whose lives he had 
singlehandedly saved were scattered around the world. Yet after decades 
of hard work by his children, and with support from Congress, the 
Portuguese diplomat eventually came to be known internationally as a 
hero. Named by Israel in 1966 as Righteous Among the Nations, he would 
later be honored in his native Portugal, where Portugal's president 
Mario Soares declared him ``Portugal's greatest hero of the twentieth 
century.'' In 2004, after reparations were paid to his family and his 
name restored, celebrations were held in over thirty nations to 
commemorate Sousa Mendes on the fiftieth anniversary of his death.
   Aristides de Sousa Mendes recorded the names and visa numbers of the 
individuals he granted visas to in a ledger book which now lies in the 
Portuguese Foreign Ministry in Lisbon. I recently viewed images of 
Sousa Mendes' list, and, although to some it may appear only as names 
and numbers, to me it represents promise and hope for the Jewish people 
and the heroism of one exceptionally brave man.
   The story of the Rozenfelds' flight from Nazi persecution, the 
righteous actions taken by Aristides de Sousa Mendes, and the 
Rozenfelds' successful passage and settlement in America is important 
to recognize. I am deeply grateful for Sousa Mendes and his actions, 
which allowed Stefan and thousands of other refugees to escape the 
evils of the Nazis and live a life of freedom and promise. I am pleased 
to be able to share the story of the Rozenfelds' perseverance and 
courage, of Sousa Mendes' heroic actions, of a case of the United 
States fulfilling its role as a haven, affording refugees welcome and 
freedom, and of the refugees contributing their energy and industry to 
the United States, with the House of Representatives today.
   I wish Stefan Rozenfeld and his family well as they celebrate this 
historic anniversary.

                          ____________________