Remembrance of Victims of the Holocaust

Floor Speech

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Ms. TENNEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank Congressman Joe Wilson. He has been a terrific mentor for me, and I am grateful for his allowing me to recognize this really important experience.

As we are remembering, there is a really important person in my life who has inspired me in many of the things that I do, and her name was Helen Sperling. She was born in 1920. She is a Holocaust survivor. She survived a Nazi death camp.

She was actually liberated on April 18, 1945--just a couple of days away from that anniversary date. She had to be hospitalized in Germany for 3 years before she was finally able to immigrate to the United States with, eventually, her husband, who was also a Nazi survivor.

But Helen was a special person, and she was someone whom I got to know. As Congressman Gohmert just mentioned, as a student in New Hartford, New York, she was a resident of our town, and a very tiny woman, wonderfully positive and very excitable and really just a warm person.

I was a seventh grade student, and she came and spoke to our class about the Holocaust and explained to us the horrors of what happened to her and her family in Nazi Germany, and it was just so impactful. Helen basically spent her life telling this story.

As Congressman Gohmert alluded to a moment ago, this wonderful person--one day, my son, 30 years later, came back from seventh grade and said: Mom, I met this incredible woman. She spoke in my class, and she told us all about the Holocaust and the horrors that occurred there, where the Jewish people were annihilated and killed and murdered in millions, and she told us her story. And at the end of the story, I asked her if I could hug her, and she said of course.

He said he was so moved by her as well. And I just turned to him, and I said: Oh, my God, Helen Sperling is back. She is still talking about it.

Helen, sadly, died a couple of years ago, and we gave honor and tribute to her as my constituent when I was a member of the New York State Assembly.

But also, I got to meet Helen on a number of occasions afterwards. She was wonderful in speaking to Boys State, you know, the American Legion's hosted events.

I just want to read a little bit from Helen's obituary, because I think it is really important to understand this woman who survived this and really devoted her entire life to educating children and people. I just want to read a little bit from this, and here is where it started from her obituary from 2 years ago.

``The anguish of the Holocaust scarred Helen for life, and she tried to turn her pain into a positive instrument for education. In March 1967, the Annual Holocaust Lecture series was begun, and it was later named for Helen and Leon,'' her late husband. ``This annual program, endowed by the Sperlings, will continue to provide Holocaust education for many generations to come.''

That was a dream of Helen's.

``From 1968 until her death, Helen had shared her life and her Holocaust experiences with tens of thousands of people, lecturing tirelessly at schools, colleges, churches, prisons, and clubs, in the fervent hope that both young people and adults would remember, learn, and build a better, more peaceful world. She will always be remembered by her challenge to `Never Be A Bystander.'

``Helen believed that the worst part of being in the concentration camps was the feeling of being powerless. She tried to teach people never to abuse power and to protect those who could not protect themselves.

``As a result of the mutual love and respect between Helen and the generations of audiences that have heard her, Clinton and New Hartford Senior High Schools,'' in my district--and New Hartford Senior High School, which is my alma mater--``have each developed scholarship awards in her name to honor those seniors who exhibit the character that Helen believed would help make a better, more humane, and peaceful world.

``These scholarships, as well as the many other tangible gifts given by `her schools,' in her honor, touched Helen deeply. She was moved and grateful for the hundreds of lilacs planted by her friends and students in memory of her father.''

The lilacs were her symbol.

But I also want to mention something really important about Helen. I got to meet her, and actually one of the last times I got to speak with her was we were speaking together at Boys State in my district in 2012 and she got a little modern. One of the things she was handing out to the young men who were at Boys State learning how to potentially be serving our Nation as members of our military or in government, she handed out these lovely little, as you can see, one of these wristbands that are so common today. And on this wristband--this is the very wristband that was handed to me by Helen back in 2012. It says: ``Thou shall not be a bystander.''

Helen handed these out to everyone she spoke with, to remember, and to remember to stand up and not let these horrors of events like the Holocaust happen again in our time.

I just wanted to pay tribute to her tonight.

I thank Congressman Wilson for this great honor to be able to speak and to mention an outstanding member of my district and what she stood for, and that we shall not be bystanders and that we shall always remember and not let this very horrific part of human history be forgotten and make sure that it never gets repeated again.

I just want to say thank you, and may God rest her soul, Helen Sperling, an amazing inspiration to me and so many thousands of others in my community. I just want to thank you for giving me a moment to recognize the great Helen Sperling from New Hartford, New York.

Mr. WILSON of South Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I thank Congresswoman Claudia Tenney very much for her heartfelt presentation, and we appreciate her military family.

While I am concluding, I would like to recognize a few Holocaust survivors in South Carolina. May we never forget their pain and suffering, as well as their family and friends who have become beloved citizens of the State of South Carolina.

Ben Stern, born in 1924 in Kielce, Poland. Ben spent 6 months in the Kielce ghetto, where he was beaten and threatened to be hung for leaving the ghetto to get food for his family. Then he was taken to a forced labor camp called Henrykow, after which he never saw his family again. He then was transferred to Auschwitz, where he was sorted and sent to Birkenau.

After being transferred again due to the Russians closing in, Ben was forced to participate in a death march where all those left standing at the end were murdered. He had fallen over just before those executions because he could no longer walk. Ben was later found by the American Army and rescued weighing 89 pounds but alive and liberated.

Bert Gosschalk, born in 1920 in a little village in Holland. He was a member of the resistance. After a failed resistance attempt to blow up a railway to take away Nazi's access, he and his wife were caught. Bert was then taken to the SS headquarters for questioning. There, he spent all day on his knees without food or water.

While he was being questioned at the SS headquarters, a Dutch resistance group ambushed the German police. To retaliate, the Nazis brought all the prisoners to where the Germans had been ambushed and murdered all of them. Bert came back to discover there were only seven or eight men who survived, and, thankfully, he was one.

Bluma Goldberg, born in Poland in a town called Pinczow. Bluma joined her sister at a labor camp where they stayed for 2 years making bullets, where they worked 12-hour shifts, 7 days a week.

As the Russians moved closer, Bluma was sent to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where disease ran rampant and everyone was covered in lice. After 3 months, Bluma was able to go with her sister Burgau, where they painted numbers on airplanes.

Renee Kolender, born in the city of Bochnia, Poland, in 1926. In 1941, Renee was taken from the Kozienice ghetto to a labor camp in a Polish town called Skarzysko. There, Renee stayed for 3 years with her mother and brother making ammunition.

As the Russians moved closer, Renee was moved to a labor camp closer to Germany where they made parts for machines that made bullets. Eventually, she was rescued by a Jewish policeman, and it was all over.

Pincus Kolender was born in the city of Bochnia, Poland, in 1926. In 1942, Pincus and his brother were take from the ghetto, where they lived for about 2 years, to Auschwitz. When Pincus arrived, he was lined up before the gate to be sorted where he was sent to a camp instead of the crematorium.

Inside the camp, his head was shaved, and he was tattooed with the number ``161253.'' Pincus described the life in the camp, of which he said: ``The hunger was also terrible. We used to search for a potato peel and fight over it. We were constantly, 24 hours a day, always hungry.'' Every few months, a selection occurred where those who looked feeble were sent to the crematorium. Eventually, Pincus was saved by General George Patton's Fifth Army.

Other survivors include: Rudy Herz, born in a very small town called Stommeln on the outskirts of Cologne, Germany, in 1925; Trude Heller, born in Vienna in 1922. She was 15 years old in March 1938 when Hitler took over Austria, and upon coming to America, she served as the First Lady with Mayor Max Heller of the beautiful city of Greenville, South Carolina.

Francine Taylor was born in Poland in 1928. Her family moved to France when she was 2 years old. They were living in Paris on June 14, 1940, when the French capital fell.

Leo Diamantstein, born in Heidelberg, Germany, in 1924.

I am grateful for this opportunity to highlight these people and this important issue during these ``Days of Remembrance,'' and I am hopeful that we will make preserving this history and telling these stories a priority.

We will never forget the lessons we have learned from the horrific tragedy in history. We must protect natural God-given rights and do all in our power to prevent these types of crimes against humanity.

Helping the world to not forget is an extraordinary artist of West Columbia, South Carolina, Mary Burkett, who has produced drawings of the murdered children of the Holocaust. These loving portraits were placed, last week, on display at the Embassy of Israel in Washington by Ambassador Ron Dermer.

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