[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 11]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 15557-15558]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




             TRIBUTE TO MR. AND MRS. HARRY AND HILDA EISEN

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. KEN CALVERT

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                         Monday, July 11, 2005

  Mr. CALVERT. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize and honor an 
extraordinary couple that survived one of history's darkest periods to 
live a vibrant and successful life together. Their tremendous life 
story is filled with incredible inspiration and hope. In a fitting 
celebration of their life together, Harry and Hilda Eisen will mark 
their 60th anniversary by renewing their wedding vows on July 10, 2005.
  Harry and Hilda were both born in 1917 in the small Polish village of 
Ibicza. When Poland was invaded by German Nazis during World War II, 
their lives became a struggle for survival.
  Harry served in the Polish Calvary and eventually became interned in 
the Auschwitz Concentration Camp. As a forced laborer, Harry worked in 
the coal mines and other grueling jobs during the 5 years he spent at 
Auschwitz, before escaping the forced death march in the winter of 
1945. Meanwhile, Hilda escaped the Lodz Ghetto internment camp and 
joined a group of Jewish partisan fighters that fought back against the 
Nazis.
  Following Poland's liberation, Harry and Hilda met up back in Ibicza 
and in July of 1945 they were married. They subsequently immigrated to 
America in 1948.
  In America, Harry used the money he earned as a sausage-maker to 
start up a modest chicken business in Arcadia, California. As his 
business and urban encroachment grew, Harry needed to find another 
location for his chicken enterprise and settled in Norco, California. 
As time went by, the once small chicken business, now named Norco 
Ranch, Inc., continued to grow as a producer and distributor of shell 
eggs and other egg products in the Southern California marketplace and 
beyond.
  Eventually, Norco Ranch successfully became one of the largest 
suppliers to the retail food chains in Southern California, employing 
nearly 500 people throughout the Inland Empire. Additionally, the 
business that once started with 100 chickens grew to have 8 million 
chickens producing egg products.
  In 2000, Harry sold Norco Ranch so that he could focus his energies 
on his philanthropic interests. Harry is a founder of the Holocaust 
Museum in Washington, D.C. and was President of the Lodzer 
Organization, which is a non-profit philanthropic association of 
Holocaust Survivors.
  Having lost their original marriage certificate after the war, Harry 
and Hilda decided to renew their wedding vows to commemorate their 60th 
anniversary. Their grandson Michael Rubinstein, who will shortly be 
ordained as a rabbi, will perform the ceremony and provide them with a 
new marriage certificate. They will

[[Page 15558]]

also be joined by their four children, Ruth, Mary, Howard and Frances.
  I want to congratulate Harry and Hilda on this wonderful occasion and 
end by sharing with you the sentimental words that accompanied the 
ceremony announcement: ``Each believing the other to be a giver of 
love, a sharer of sorrow, a bearer of joy and a reason for life, they 
decided to renew their wedding vows.''

                          ____________________