Tom Lantos

Mr. LANTOS

Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, I invite my colleagues to join me today in paying tribute to Mr. Feng Shan Ho, an outstanding San Francisco resident who rescued thousands from Nazi destruction during World War II. Mr. Ho died in September 1997 at his home in San Francisco. Mr. Speaker, Feng Shan Ho left an indelible imprint on the people whose lives he saved. Like the Swedish diplomat and humanitarian, Raoul Wallenberg, and the American diplomat and humanitarian rescuer, Varian Fry, Mr. Ho has shown what an individual can achieve when he has the courage to oppose repression and racism despite seemingly impossible odds. Feng Shan Ho was the Consul General of China in Vienna in 1938. Following the annexation of Austria by Germany that year, he saw increasing persecution of Jews and others at the hands of the Nazis. Jewish-owned businesses were vandalized and their owners arrested. Jews and other so-called ``enemies of the Reich'' were sent to concentration camps within weeks of the annexation. Austrian Nazi authorities informed Jews that if they obtained visas for other countries and emigrated, they would be allowed to leave unharmed. Many tried to emigrate, but most found that few countries were willing to permit them entry. Consul General Ho was appalled at the increasingly desperate situation that he observed. In an act of courage and compassion, he sought to help the refugees. On his own authority as Consul General-- and without the permission of his superiors in China--he issued visas for admission to China to any person who requested one. With these visas as proof of destination, Jews could obtain permission from Nazi officials to leave Austria and Germany. In 1939 Nazi officials confiscated the building in which the Chinese consulate was located because of its Jewish ownership. The Chinese consulate was forced to operate in other, smaller facilities. In 1940 Consul General Ho was transferred to the United States. In 1941, the government of China broke off diplomatic relations with Germany and the Consulate General in Vienna was closed. After leaving Vienna, Mr. Ho spent the remainder of the war involved in China's struggle against Japan. His first assignment after Vienna was to Washington, DC, and he later served at the Foreign Ministry in China's wartime capital, Chungking. In 1947, Mr. Ho began a nine-year term as Ambassador to Egypt and several other Middle Eastern countries. At the conclusion of the Chinese Civil War, Mr. Ho remained loyal to the Chinese Nationalist government which fled to Taiwan in 1949. Following his term in the Middle East, Ambassador Ho served as China's ambassador to Mexico, Bolivia, and Columbia. In 1973 after a distinguished career in the diplomatic service of the Republic of China that spanned four decades, Ambassador Ho retired and settled in San Francisco. On September 28, 1997, at the age of 96, he died at his home there, attended by his wife and daughter. The story of Feng Shan Ho's courageous actions in Vienna is currently being told in a traveling exhibit organized by Mr. Eric Saul that is being shown in American and foreign cities. The exhibit was on display at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Israel in April, and earlier it was on display at my district office of California. Mr. Speaker, I invite my colleagues to join me in paying well- deserved tribute to Ambassador Feng Shan Ho--a great man, a dedicated public servant, and a courageous humanitarian.

Mr. LANTOS

Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, in honor of National Poetry Month, I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate a young constituent of mine, Noah Frank, who recently won the grand prize for his age group in the national ``River of Words'' competition for his poem ``I Want to Be.'' Noah Frank, a second-grader at Lakeshore Elementary School in San Francisco, displays in his poem remarkable wit and maturity, as well as a concrete grasp of the English language. Most importantly, however, his poem poignantly expresses the joy of exploring our world through the imagination. I can't think of a better theme for National Poetry Month. Through poetry we exercise not only the vitality of language and thought; we exercise our imaginations. It is our imaginations that allow us to wonder. I Want to Be I want to be a dogfish and catch a leaping catfish with whiskers as long as a stream. And I want to be the rain trinkling down on the world telling it it's springtime.

Mr. LANTOS

Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Chairman, I rise today to support affirmative action programs in this nation and to oppose strongly this unfortunate amendment that the House is considering. This amendment is an outrageous assault upon the Constitutional responsibilities of American colleges and universities. If Amendment 73 is adopted, we would face debilitating nation-wide consequences which would destroy the years of progress our higher education system has made in compensating for past and present discrimination against women and minorities. Affirmative action programs are still needed. Years of past discrimination coupled with continued discrimination have deprived many women and minorities of equal access to higher education. The long shadow of historical legal discrimination is still visible in our country; this discrimination was propagated and enforced by the federal government. President Clinton has reminded us that there is still no level playing field for women and people of color. Mr. Speaker, now is not the time to forget that bigotry, inequality, and economic barriers still close doors everywhere for women and minorities. Mr. Riggs' amendment (Amendment 73) would prevent educational institutions from providing disadvantaged students with scholarships, financial aid, support programs, and outreach programs are essential if students from disadvantaged communities are to have access to higher education, which is the prerequisite to their economic and social advancement. In the Bakke decision, the Supreme Court upheld the use of affirmative action to advance diversity in education. Colleges and universities voluntarily administer affirmative action programs to comply with their statutory and Constitutional obligations to end discrimination in higher education. Certain institutions would be placed in the absurd position of being cut off from federal funding while attending to court-ordered desegregation plans. This legislation would create a serious backlash against current legal redress for past discrimination. Mr. Speaker, if affirmative action admission programs are banned, we would lose a valuable tool for combating the existence of ignorance and prejudice. Attending a diverse campus gives students the opportunity to confront face-to-face the stereotypes and harmful assumptions about difference in our country. The college experience is one of peer exchange. There are few better ways to break down stereotypes of race, ethnicity, and gender in this country than allowing students to live and study together in a community of mutual respect and understanding. We cannot have an effective dialogue on racism and bigotry in this country unless everyone is given an equal chance to attend college and obtain a college degree. The economic divisions in this country are linked to education levels within any given group. It is not a tragedy of circumstance that those minorities with the lowest levels of higher education attainment are also the poorest people in our country. This ill-conceived amendment would not only re-segregate our colleges and universities, it would have a chilling effect upon the larger society. As a proud alumni of the University of California at Berkeley, I am appalled by the plunge in undergraduate admissions of minority students since the ban on affirmative action in California was approved in a state referendum. That unfortunate California referendum is the fundamental idea behind this amendment that we are considering, and its consequences in California have demonstrated why we must oppose it. In California, admissions of Chicano, Latino, and African American students for the coming freshman class have dropped by more than half. In the recent fall class of the Boalt Law School at Berkeley only seven African-American students were admitted, and only one chose to enroll. Mr. Speaker, this ill-conceived amendment by Mr. Riggs sends a message to women and minorities that they are not welcome in institutions of higher learning. This bill proclaims loudly that we do not want a just society, that we would rather turn our backs and not accept the existence and legacy of discrimination. I am not alone in decrying the effect of eliminating affirmative action. Mr. Speaker, sixty-two of our country's most prominent university presidents oppose this legislation and have placed advertisements in national papers to emphasize the importance of racial, ethnic, and gender diversity in contributing to a strong entering class. The students of the University of California, Berkeley, one of the finest public universities in this country and my alma mater, have taken it upon themselves to speak out against H.R. 3300 and to speak in support of affirmative action. H.R. 3300, introduced by Mr. Riggs, is the stand-alone version of Amendment 73 which we are now considering. Mr. Speaker, on Wednesday, April 22, the Associated Students of the University of California (ASUC) unanimously approved a resolution opposing these provisions. I am proud that the students stand firmly united against this harmful measure. Mr. Speaker, I ask that the statement be included in the Record. Let us learn from them. A Bill of the Associated Students of the University of California in Opposition to the ``Anti-Discrimination in College Admissions Act of 1998'' (HR 3330) Authored and sponsored by: ASUC External Affairs Vice- President Sanjeev Bery Whereas: The misnamed ``Anti-Discrimination in College Admissions Act of 1998'' (HR3330) would prohibit colleges and universities from using affirmative action in college admissions if they receive any federal funds; and Whereas: If any student at a university receives federal loan money or Pell grant funds, the university would be prohibited from using affirmative action in admissions; and Whereas: Representative Frank Riggs is the author of this resolution, and is almost certain to offer it as an amendment to the Higher Education Act when it is reauthorized on April 22, and Whereas: Affirmative action programs establish equal opportunity for women and people of color, redress gender, racial, and ethnic discrimination, and encourage diversity in the workplace and educational institutions; therefore, be it Resolved: that the Associated Students of the University of California oppose Congressman Riggs' ``Anti-Discrimination in College Admissions Act of 1998'' and urge all California members of the Congress to oppose this resolution.

Mr. LANTOS

Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, on Thursday, April 23, Members of Congress joined with representatives of the diplomatic corps, executive and judicial branch officials, and hundreds of Holocaust survivors and their families to commemorate the National Days of Remembrance in the rotunda of the United States Capitol. The touching words of Mr. Benjamin Meed, one of the most prominent and active survivors in the United States, reflected the emotional and poignant focus of the ceremony: ``Children of the Holocaust: Their Memories, Our Legacy.'' Through poetry and personal reflections, Mr. Meed affected us all. As a survivor of the Holocaust myself, I was especially moved by Mr. Meed's remarks. He delicately spoke: Many survivors became part of this great country that adopted us, and we are grateful Americans. Although we are now in the winter of our lives, we look toward the future, because we believe in sharing our experiences--by bearing witness and educating others--there is hope of protecting new generations of men, women and children--who might be abandoned and forgotten, persecuted and murdered. . . . . Knowing that the impossible is possible, there is the chance that history can be repeated--unless we are mindful. Mr. Speaker, I share this mission with Mr. Meed. We must never, ever forget. Benjamin Meed was born in Warsaw, Poland. He worked as a slave laborer for the Nazis, survived in the Warsaw Ghetto and was an active member of the Warsaw Underground with his wife, Vladka. A member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council since its inception, he chairs the Museum's Days of Remembrance Committee. He is President of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and a leader of a number of other organizations. Mr. Meed founded the Benjamin and Vladka Meed Registry of Jewish Holocaust Survivors permanently housed at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Mr. Speaker, insert Benjamin Meed's Days of Remembrance address for the Record. Children of the Holocaust: Their Memories, Our Legacy Members of the diplomatic corps, distinguished members of the United States Senate and House of Representatives, members of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, distinguished guests, fellow survivors and dear friends, welcome to the 19th national Days of Remembrance commemoration. First, let me take this opportunity to express our gratitude to the members of the United States Congress for their strong support of the Holocaust Memorial Museum. The enormous success of the Museum and its educational and Remembrance programs is due, in large part, to your efforts on our behalf. Thank you. We gather together again to remember those whom we loved and lost in the pit of hell--the Holocaust. We dedicate this commemoration to all the precious children of the Holocaust, their memories, our legacy. More than a million and a half children--almost all of them Jewish--were struck down without pity. They we murdered simply for who they were, Jews. The young ones, who were silenced forever, were the hope and future of our people. We will never know the extent of human potential that was destroyed--the scientists, the writers, the musicians--gifted talent burned to ashes by German Nazi hate. At such tender ages, our children grew old overnight. They quickly learned how to conceal pain and how to cover up fear. More importantly, with natural compassion, they comforted those around them. The writer and educator Itazek Katznelson was so touched by an abandoned little girl caring for her baby brother in the Warsaw Ghetto that he composed a poem about her. And I quote: Thus it was at the end of the winter of 1942 in such a poor house of shelter for children, I saw the ones just gathered from the streets. In this station, I saw a girl about five years old. She fed her younger brother--and he cried. The little one was sick. In a diluted bit of jam, she dipped tiny crusts of bread and skillfully inserted them into his mouth. This my eyes were privileged to see see-- to see this mother of five years, feeding her child and to her soothing words. How can we survivors forget these martyred children? Their lives, their laughter, their gentle love, their strength and bravery in the face of certain death are still part of our daily lives. Their acts of courage and resistance remain a heroic inspiration. Their cries to be remembered ring across the decades. And we hear them. They are always in our thoughts in our sleepless nights, in our pained hearts. Like all survivors, there are many horrible events that I witnessed, but one particular event deeply troubles me and hounds me. It was in April, fifty-five years ago, almost to this day. Passing as an ``Aryan'' member of the Polish community, I was in Krasinski Square near the walls of the Warsaw Ghetto. Inside the Ghetto, the uprising was underway. Guns and grenades thundered; the ghetto was ablaze. From where I was standing, I could feel the heat from the fires. There were screams for help from the Jews inside the walls. But the people surrounding me outside the walls went about their daily lives, insensitive and indifferent to the tragedy-in-progress. I watched in disbelief as, across the Square, a merry-go-round spun around and around to the joy of my Polish neighbor's children, while within the Ghetto only a few yards away, our Jewish children were being burned to death. To this day, the scene still enrages me. How can one forget the agony of the victims? How can we explain such moral apathy of the bystanders? Many of us were children in the Holocaust. Whether by luck or by accident, we survived. Liberation by the Allied Armies restored us to life, and our gratitude to the soldiers will always remain. The flags that stand behind me from the liberating divisions of the United States Army and from the Jewish Brigade are far more than cloth. In 1945 and today, they are the symbols of freedom and hope for us survivors. Today we are bringing history together. Liberation offered new opportunities and we seized them. The transition was very brief. We helped to create a new nation--the State of Israel, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. Our history might have been very different if only Israel had existed 60 years ago. Nevertheless, we are here, and Israel is our response and Remembrance of the Holocaust. Mr. Ambassador Ben Elissar, please convey to the people of Israel our commitment and solidarity with them. Many survivors became part of this great country that adopted us, and we are grateful Americans. Although we are now in the winter of our lives, we look toward the future, because we believe in sharing our experiences--by bearing witness and educating others--there is hope of protecting new generations of men, women and children--who might be abandoned and forgotten, persecuted and murdered. We remember not for ourselves, but for others, and those yet unborn. Knowing that the impossible is possible, there is the chance that history can be repeated--unless we are mindful. The task of preserving Holocaust memory will soon pass to our children and grandchildren; to high school and middle school teachers; to custodians of Holocaust centers; and, most importantly to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. But monuments of stone and well-written textbooks are not enough. Personal dedication to Remembrance--to telling and retelling the stories of the Holocaust with their lessons for humanity--must become a mission for all humankind, for all generations to come. In these great halls of Congress, we see many symbols of the ideals that America represents--liberty, equality and justice. It was the collective rejection of such principles by some nations that made the Holocaust possible. Today, let us--young and old alike--promise to keep an ever watchful eye for those who would deny and defy these precious principles of human conduct. Let us remember. Thank you

Mr. LANTOS

Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, on Tuesday, April 23, Members of Congress joined with representatives of the diplomatic corps, executive and judicial branch officials, and hundreds of Holocaust survivors and their families to commemorate the National Days of Remembrance in the rotunda of the United States Capitol. This moving ceremony featured a stirring address by His Excellency Eliahu Ben-Elissar, Israel's distinguished Ambassador to the United States, who reminded us all of the horrors of the Holocaust and the need to ensure that the suffering of Hitler's victims will never, never be forgotten. Ambassador Ben-Elissar, a native of Poland, has represented his nation in government and the diplomatic corps for over thirty years. A longtime public servant for his country, he has helped to guide Israel to the outstanding economic, political, and foreign policy accomplishments which have marked its first fifty years as a State. Ambassador Ben-Elissar was a Member of the Knesset for fifteen years, compiling an exemplary record as Chair of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee and as a member of Israel's delegations to the United Nations General Assembly and the Madrid Peace Conference in 1991. Prior to this outstanding service he played a significant role in the historic peace agreements with Egypt, first as the Director-General of the Prime Minister's office under Menachem Begin and later as Israel's first Ambassador to Egypt in 1980-81. Mr. Speaker, I insert Ambassador Ben-Elissar's solemn and dignified remarks for the Record, and I urge my colleagues to carefully note the observations of this fine statesman. Ambassador Ben-Elissar's Address at the Rotunda of the Capitol on Thursday, April 23, 1998 In the late 20s and early 30s of this century no one paid attention to Hitler. In spite of his growing influence over the masses in Germany, no one really cared to take a good look at his ideas and plans described in detail in ``Mein Kampf.'' When the general boycott of the Jews was declared in Germany on April 1, 1933, and subsequently, all Jewish physicians, lawyers, and professionals were prohibited to practice their professions, no one thought it was more than a temporary measure taken by an interim government. No one really reacted when, in 1935, the infamous laws on race and blood were adopted in Nurenberg. No country in the world declared itself ready, at the Evian Conference on Refugees, in July 1938, to take in a significant number of Jewish refugees from Germany and the recently annexed Austria. The Kristalnacht, in November 1938, opened the eyes of some, but then, when gates to a safe haven were rapidly closing, when for the first time in history Jews were denied even the ``right'' to become refugees, the world remained silent. The only country to recall its ambassador from Berlin was this country--The United States of America. There is a lesson to be learned--Whenever a potential enemy wants to kill you--Believe him. Do not disregard his warnings. If he says he wants to take away what belongs to you--Believe him. If he claims he will destroy you--Believe him. Do not dismiss him and his threats by saying he cannot be serious--He can! In 1945, the world was at last liberated from the yoke of the most evil of empires ever to exist in the annals of human history. But for us it was too late. We were not liberated. By then we already had been liquidated. In 1948, we actually arose from the ashes. Destruction was at last ending. Redemption was at hand. After two thousand years of exile, wandering and struggle the State of Israel was reborn. We look back with indescribable pain on the terrible tragedy that has left its mark in us forever. Had the State of Israel existed during the 30s, Jews would not have had to become refugees. They could have simply gone home to their ancestral land. They would have not been massacred. They would have had the means to defend themselves. Yesterday, the general staff of the Israeli army convened in Jerusalem at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial. Tough soldiers vowed that the Jewish people will never be submitted to genocide again. Today, while we are celebrating the 50th anniversary of the State of Israel and commemorating the Holocaust, in the presence of United States senators and representatives, survivors, members of my Embassy and commanders in the Israeli Defense Forces, may I state, that for us, statehood and security are not merely words, for us, they are life itself--and we are determined to defend them.

Mr. LANTOS

Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, on Thursday, April 23, Members of Congress joined with representatives of the diplomatic corps, executive and judicial branch officials, and hundreds of Holocaust survivors and their families to commemorate the National Days of Remembrance in the rotunda of the United States Capitol. The keynote address at this solemn ceremony was delivered by the distinguished President of Yale University, Dr. Richard C. Levin's meaningful words served to remind us all of our communal responsibility to educate our children and grandchildren. Dr. Levin is the twenty-second President of Yale University. Prior to his outstanding service in this office, he added to the University's unparalleled reputation through his efforts as the Frederick William Beinecke Professor of Economics at Yale. In addition to teaching a wide variety of courses on subjects ranging from the oil industry to the history of economic thought, President Levin served on dozens of major committees and rose in the administrative ranks to become the chairman of the economics department and the dean of the graduate schools at Yale before his October 2, 1993 inauguration as President of the University. Mr. Speaker, I insert President Levin's thought-provoking remarks for the Record, and I urge my colleagues to take note of their meaning and importance. ``Blessed is the March. . .'' (By Richard C. Levin) The main camp at Auschwitz was situated, not in remote isolation, but in a densely populated region. To the east, immediately adjacent to the camp, was a pleasant village, complete with a hotel and shops, built to house SS troops and their families. One mile farther east was the town of Auschwitz, intended by the very men who ordered the construction of the camps to be a center of industrial activity, a focus of German resettlement at the confluence of three rivers, with easy access to the coal fields of Upper Silesia.\1\ In his chilling work on the origins of Auschwitz, Robert- Jan van Pelt documents the Utopian vision that drove the systematic planning for German colonization of the East. In December 1941, Hans Stosberg, the architect and master planner, sent his friends a New Year's greeting card. On the front he wished them ``health, happiness, and a good outcome for every new beginning.'' The card's central spread depicted his drawing for a reconstruction of the central market place in Auschwitz. The inscription on the back of the greeting card connected Stosberg's current project with National Socialist mythology; ``In the year 1241 Silesian knights, acting as saviors of the Reich, warded off the Mongolian assault at Wahlstatt. In that same century Auschwitz was founded as a German town. After six hundred years [sic] the Fuhrer Adolf Hitler is turning the Bolshevik menace away from Europe. This year, 1941, the construction of a new German city and the reconstruction of the old Silesian market have been planned and initiated.'' To Stosberg's inscription, I would add that during the same year, 1941, it was decided to reduce the space allocated to each prisoner at the nearby Auschwitz-Birkanau camp from 14 to 11 square feet. How, in one of the most civilized nations on earth, could an architect boast about work that involved not only designing the handsome town center depicted on his greeting card but the meticulous planning of facilities to house the slave labor to build it? This is but one of numberless questions that knowledge of the Holocaust compels us to ask. In the details of its horror, the Holocaust forces us to redefine the range of human experience; it demands that we confront real, not imagined, experiences that defy imagination. How can we began to understand the dehumanizing loss of identity suffered by the victims in the camps? How can we begin to understand the insensate rationality and brutality of the persecutors? How can we begin to understand the silence of the bystanders? There is only one answer: by remembering. The distinguished Yale scholar, Geoffrey Hartman, tells us, ``the culture of remembrance is a high tide. . . .At present, three generations are preoccupied with Holocaust memory. There are the eyewitnesses; their children, the second generation, who have subdued some of their ambivalence and are eager to know their parents better; and the third generation, grand-children who treasure the personal stories of relatives now slipping away. \2\ The tide will inevitably recede. And if there are no survivors to tell the story, who will make their successors remember and help them to understand? Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, along with those of sister museums in other cities, are educating the public about the horrors of the Shoah. Museums, university archives, and private foundations are collecting and preserving the materials that enable us to learn from the past, and it is the special role of universities to support the scholars who explore and illuminate this dark episode in human history. Our universities have a dual responsibility: to preserve the memory of the Holocaust and to seek a deeper understanding of it. This is a daunting and important responsibility. To confront future generations with the memory of the Holocaust is to change forever their conception of humanity. To urge them to understand it is to ask their commitment to prevent its recurrence. In the words of Hannah Senesh, the 23 year-old poet and patriot executed as a prisoner of the Reich in Budapest, ``Blessed is the match that is consumed in kindling a flame.'' May the act of remembrance consume our ignorance and indifference, and light the way to justice and righteousness. footnotes \1\ Robert-Jan van Pelt, ``Auschwitz: From Architect's Promise to Inmate's Perdition,'' Modernism/Modernity, 1:1, January 1994, 80-120. See also Deborah Dwork and Robert-Jan van Pelt, Auschwitz: 1270 to the Present, New York: W.W. Norton, 1996. \2\ Geoffrey Hartman, ``Shoah and Intellectual Witness,'' Partisan Review, 1998:1, 37.

Mr. LANTOS

Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, on Thursday, April 23, Members of Congress joined with representatives of the diplomatic corps, executive and judicial branch officials, and hundreds of Holocaust survivors and their families to commemorate the National Days of Remembrance in the rotunda of the United States Capitol. Miles Lerman, the respected Chairperson of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council and one of America's most distinguished advocates for Holocaust remembrance, delivered a moving speech devoted to the theme of this year's ceremony, ``Children of the Holocaust: Their Memories, Our Legacy.'' Mr. Lerman eloquently and emotionally described the tragic death of 1.5 million children at the hands of Hitler's storm troopers, and, by telling the story of one young victim, conveyed to the audience the extent of our society's void because of their loss. Miles Lerman has served as Chairperson of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council since 1993. A member of the Advisory Board of the President's Commission on the Holocaust, he was appointed to the first United States Holocaust Memorial Council in 1980 by President Carter. Prior to his appointment to lead the Council, Mr. Lerman directed its International Relations Committee and served as National Chairman of the Campaign to Remember. During the Holocaust, he fought as a partisan in the forests of southern Poland. He and his wife, Chris, a survivor of Auschwitz, rebuilt their lives in the United States; they have two children. Mr. Speaker, I insert Miles Lerman's thought-provoking address for the Record, and I implore my colleagues to read them and appreciate them. Miles Lerman's Remarks, National Days of Remembrance, Capitol Rotunda-- April 23, 1998 Distinguished Ambassadors, Honorable Members of Congress, ladies and gentlemen. As the Honorable Ambassador, Eliahu Ben Elissar pointed out to you, the State of Israel is celebrating its 50th anniversary of independence. The United States Holocaust Memorial Council was pleased to mark this occasion by including the flag of the Jewish Brigade in the presentation of the flags of the American liberating units. On behalf of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, I would like to extend our best wishes on this special anniversary to the people of Israel and to the State of Israel. It is our most fervent hope that the peace negotiations between the State of Israel and the Palestinian Authority will come to an understanding which will bring peace to this troubled region. Happy anniversary and may your efforts for a permanent peace agreement be crowned with full success. The theme of this year's National Days of Remembrance is remembering the children and fulfilling their legacy. So let remembrance be our guide. One of the expert witnesses called to testify at the trial proceedings of Adolf Eichman in Jerusalem was the world renowned historian Professor Salo Baron. In his expert testimony, Professor Baron made the case not only for the terrible losses that the Jewish people suffered at the hands of the Nazis but he more specifically underscored the great loss that humankind at large has suffered for having been deprived of the potential talents and brain power of the one and a half million children who perished in the Holocaust. Professor Baron stressed a point that the world is much poorer today because of these great losses. He was bemoaning the losses of the future scientists and scholars who did not get to research. He was bemoaning the future composers who did not get to compose; the teachers who did not grow up to teach; and the doctors who never go to heal. One and a half million murdered children is such a staggering number that it is most difficult to comprehend. This is why I thought that perhaps singling out and remembering the tragedy of one child would symbolize the great loss of all the children who were annihilated by the Nazis. So today let us remember Deborah Katz. In the Holocaust archives there is a letter written in 1943 by a Jewish girl by the name of Deborah Katz. She was nine years old when she and her family were taken out of the ghetto and loaded into cattle trains destined for the death camp of Treblinka. Her parents managed to pry open a small window of the box car and threw the child out hoping that a miracle would happen and she would survive. A Catholic nun happened to pass by and found the injured child. She brought her to the convent and hid her among the sisters who gradually nursed Deborah back to health. The child was in comparative safety and she had a good change to survive. One morning, however, the nuns woke up and found a letter on Deborah's bed and this is what the nine year old child wrote. ``It's bright daylight outside but there is darkness around me. The sun is shining but there is no warmth coming from it. I miss my mommy and daddy and my little brother, Moses, who always played with me. I can't stand being without them any longer and I want to go where they are.'' The following morning Deborah Katz was put by the Gestapo on the next trainload--destination--the gas chambers of Treblinka. Today, I want to say to little Deborah, if you can hear me, poor child, and I know that you can. I want you to know that there is no more darkness, thank God. The sun is shining again and warming little children like you. And what is most important, dear child, I want you to know that you did not die in vain. You have touched the hearts of many decent people, far far away from the place where you lived and died. There is a museum in Washington where within the last five years more than ten million visitors came to remember the horrors of those dark days. You are not forgotten, little Deborah, and you will serve as an inspiration to many children throughout the world to make sure that in years to come, no child of any people, in any country, should ever have to go through the agonies and pains that you have suffered.

Mr. LANTOS

Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, last week President Clinton delivered an important address in the Rose Garden about the critical need for quality, affordable child care in our country. The President reviewed several ideas and proposals designed to meet this demand, contending that we have ``to act on the overwhelming weight of the evidence about the importance of the earliest years in the child's life.'' I wholeheartedly agree with President Clinton, and I believe that I can point him to an outstanding example of what can and should be done. Palcare in Burlingame, California, is an exceptional, nonprofit child care center designed to address the most serious concern that dual- income and single-parent families in the Bay Area are forced to confront--the need to ensure a safe, nurturing environment for their children. I visited Palcare last month and came away with an immense appreciation for its educational excellence, its devoted staff, and, most of all, its invaluable assistance to mothers and fathers from across the Peninsula. I am delighted to congratulate Palcare on the fifth anniversary of its opening and on its exceptional record of community service in San Mateo County. As our country has shifted from an industrial to a service-based structure, the traditional one-income family has become more the exception than the rule, and 9-to-5 work days are increasingly becoming a rarity. Many single parents hold three or more jobs, struggling to create a positive environment for their children while fighting to earn the financial resources to feed them, clothe them, and educate them. Palcare responds to their social dilemma described by former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich during a visit to the child care center in 1995: ``Finding good child care is a challenge for everyone, but it's compounded by nonstandard hours. Our service-based economy is increasingly running 24 hours. Parents are required to work early in the morning, nights and on weekends.'' Mr. Speaker, this excellent child care center provides the highest quality service night and day, seven days per week, for over two hundred families. It enhances the work force by enabling parents to take jobs they would otherwise be unable to accept; it gives our youngest citizens a constructive educational milieu in which to grow; and, perhaps most important, Palcare allows mothers and fathers employed at the San Francisco International Airport and its surrounding communities to work without fear for the safety and well-being of their sons and daughters. Palcare's origins reflect the diverse coalition of Bay Area organizations that rely on its vital work. Corporations and labor unions, public interest groups and private foundations, county and local governments alike joined together during the late 1980's and early 1990's with the goal of reducing pressure on working parents. These disparate elements disagreed on many political and economic issues, but they were united in their vision of the benefits which hard-working mothers and fathers were entitled to receive. They wanted a top-notch, secure facility with the space and comfort to serve as a cocoon for the intellectual, social, and physical development of young children; an educated and motivated staff with an Early Childhood Educator devoted to each and every boy and girl; a level of flexibility to accommodate the complex and hectic work schedules of single parents and multiple-income families, and a measure of affordability that would allow mothers and fathers to avoid painful choices between important parenting priorities. These ideals guided the creation of Palcare and formed a combination of values which has resulted in Palcare's extraordinary success over the past five years. Mr. Speaker, to give credit to all of the individuals and organizations that have contributed to Palcare's growth and acclaim would require a book, but I want to mention some of the key ones. Its Founding Partners, the varied array of interests determined to develop a solution for the area's child care crisis, deserve special recognition: United Airlines, the San Francisco International Airport, the Airport Labor Coalition, San Mateo Country government, the City and County of San Francisco, Mills Peninsula Health Services, The Child Care Coordinating Council, the San Mateo Central Labor Council, and The United Way. This partnership has been bolstered by many large and small employers from throughout the Bay Area who have contributed generously to Palcare's scholarship fund to dilute the financial burden on working parents, and who have donated valued supplies and services to the center. Recent benefactors have included The Gap Foundation, PG &E, Xerox Corporation, and the Visa Corporation. The organization has also been blessed by the sincere efforts of Palcare Parents, several of whom sit on the 21-person Board of Directors and many of whom formed an active Parent Advisory Committee to suggest improvements to the center. Above all, Palcare is the product of its talented and nourishing staff under the leadership of Executive Director Nirmala Dillman. Mr. Speaker, these fine individuals and bodies stand proudly as a model for child care providers and community leaders across America. I am joined in my appreciation of Palcare by many impressive entities. The center has been recognized by the Women's Bureau of the Departmental of Labor, the Association of Work/Life Professionals and the California Association for the Education of Young Children as an example for others to emulate. These experts are exceeded in the degree to which they cherish Palcare only by the mothers and fathers who draw comfort and security from its services. Art Pulaski, a good friend of mine who is Executive Secretary-Treasurer of the California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO, and a Palcare Parents, said: ``The thing I think about most is my kids--that they're safe, well cared for, and happy. It's important to me that they are prepared for school, academically as well as socially.'' For the sake of Art's son, Luke, and for all of the other Bay Area families that value its services, it is a privilege and honor for me to congratulate Palcare on five years of invaluable contributions, and to express my hope that every parent in America will eventually have access to the type of care which Palcare so ably provides for our community.

Mr. LANTOS

Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, I first want to thank my colleague and friend Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi for her leadership on the issue of needle exchange. Mr. Speaker, there is confusion and misconception coming from the opponents of needle exchange. The Republican leadership is under the impression that the American people do not care about ending the AIDS epidemic that is ravaging our country. They are under the impression that the American people will choose to believe rhetoric over scientific statements of fact from our nation's most trusted scientific experts. They are also under the impression that American citizens prefer more of the politics of division and empty symbolism, rather than sound public health practices. Mr. Speaker, the Republican leadership is mistaken. I rise in strong opposition to this ill-conceived and unnecessary piece of legislation, H.R. 3717. The bill purports to ban permanently all federal support for needle exchange programs. However, not one single federal mandate currently requires states to administer needle exchange programs. The decision to fund needle exchange programs should be left to the states. Local governments and the American people do not want to close the door on a proven method of combating HIV transmission. Over 60 percent of Americans want their communities to make the decision on needle exchange programs. This legislation is blatant hypocrisy. Those in this Chamber who have been the most outspoken and vociferous in raising the cry of ``states rights'' and urging that the Congress stop imposing Federal mandates upon the state governments are the very same ones who are leading the charge today to prohibit states from making independent decisions about what is in the public health interest of their own citizens. Mr. Speaker, the American people don't want to play political games with the AIDS epidemic. The proponents of this legislation are trying to pit the AIDS epidemic against the war on drugs. This strategy will backfire. Americans understand that needle exchange programs reduce the transmission of HIV, and Americans understand what scientific studies have established--needle exchange programs do not encourage the use of illegal drugs. The proponents of this legislation are ignoring the intelligence of the American people. They are ignoring the conclusions of countless scientific experts who support needle exchange programs--Dr. David Satcher, United States Surgeon General; Dr. Harold Varmus, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; Dr. Alan Leshner, Director of the National Institute of Drug Abuse; and Dr. Claire Broome, Acting Director of the Centers for Disease Control. All of these leading public health experts agree that needle exchange programs are an effective AIDS prevention method that does not cause increased use of illegal drugs. The National Institutes of Health, our own federally-sponsored health care research organization which we are supporting with over $3.5 billion this year, supports needle exchange programs. Thousands of other medical experts and healthcare organizations, including the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, in the United States and around the world have stated that needle exchange programs are necessary in the fight against AIDS. These respected organizations tell us that needle exchange programs do not promote the use of illegal drugs. The proponents of this legislation are ignoring this overwhelming and unanimous evidence. Needle exchange does not promote drug use. In fact, the opposite is true. Needle exchange programs encourage injection drug users to seek drug treatment. Needle exchange programs are an integral component of drug treatment networks in terms of health care, counseling, psychosocial services, and outreach strategy. Needle exchange programs keep people alive, keep people safe from the HIV infection, and can help in encouraging people to take the first critical steps to begin a drug-free life. Mr. Speaker, I strongly oppose illegal drug use. But we must not confuse the fight against drug abuse with the fight against AIDS. Those who support H.R. 3717 are arguing for legislation that would effectively declare the life of any person who has used drugs or is using drugs, as well as the lives of their spouses and children, to be worth less than the ten cents it would cost to save them from AIDS. I cannot share that position. Mr. Speaker, injection drug users can pass on HIV infection to their partners, to their children, and to other drug users. Over 50 percent of all new HIV infections are due to injection drug use. I am appalled that anyone in this Congress could have a higher priority than saving the lives of these innocent victims. Millions of women and children's lives can be saved indirectly through needle exchange programs. Some 74 percent of all AIDS cases among women are connected directly or indirectly to injection drug use. The rate of infection in women is steadily climbing. More than 50% of AIDS cases in children are also connected to drug use. Minorities suffer disproportionately from this disease. All these lives are worth saving, and there is a simple method to save them--needle exchange. Mr. Speaker, the choice to be made is between exchanging needles and losing millions of lives to AIDS--to say nothing of the horrendous health care costs that these AIDS cases will create. Needle exchange is a cost-effective public health measure to combat HIV transmission and infection. Those who support this legislation are denying our communities the right to choose for themselves one of the best and most effective methods of fighting new HIV infections. This legislation goes against common sense, against science, and against our own values. Mr. Speaker, we must not be put aside by short-sighted political maneuvers. The American people are too smart to let anyone pull the wool over their eyes. They are too smart to accept ignorance and bigotry in place of scientific knowledge. The American people know better. H.R. 3717 is a vote against the judgment of state and local health officials, a vote against the rights of local communities to make thoughtful decisions, a vote against scientific evidence, a vote against the judgment of the American people, and a vote against countless lives which could be saved by needle exchange programs.

Mr. LANTOS

Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that an additional 30 minutes be made available, to be equally divided between the majority and the minority, for the debate of H.J. Res. 102, since large numbers of our colleagues wish to speak on this subject.

Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to my distinguished friend and colleague, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Bentsen).

Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, let me first acknowledge in the gallery the distinguished Ambassador of the State of Israel and his party for having joined us for this very significant occasion. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the distinguished gentleman from New York (Mr. Gilman), chairman of the Committee on International Relations, my good friend, for his kind words. Let me just say no one in this body has been a more steadfast supporter of the democratic state of Israel than Chairman Gilman, who through the years, with action after action, has demonstrated his profound commitment to this democratic friend and ally of the United States and to the ultimate goal of that democratic friend and ally, the securing of a permanent and stable peace in the region. Mr. Speaker, I would like to first briefly discuss the essence of my resolution. We here in the Congress are congratulating the modern state of Israel, which is the outgrowth of the existence of the historic Kingdom of Israel established thousands of years ago in the City of Jerusalem and in the land of Israel. The establishment of the modern State of Israel 50 years ago followed the slaughter of more than 6 million Jews in the concentration camps and gas Chambers of Europe. Since being created as a tiny nation on a tiny piece of land with a population of some 600,000, the modern state of Israel has rebuilt a nation, forged a new and dynamic society, created a unique and vital economic political, cultural and intellectual life, despite mind- boggling costs of six wars started against it, continuing terrorism, international ostracism and severe economic boycotts. The people of Israel have established a vibrant, functioning, pluralistic democratic system which cherishes the right of free speech, free press, free and fair and open elections, the rule of law, and all the democratic practices of a free society. During the 50 years of its existence, this young State absorbed well over a million refugees from throughout the world, ranging from Ethiopia to the former Soviet Union and integrated these people fully into the very fabric of Israeli society. For a half a century, the United States and Israel have maintained a special and unique relationship based on mutually shared democratic values, common strategic interests, and moral bonds of friendship and mutual respect. The American people have shared an affinity with the people of Israel and regard Israel as a strong and trusted ally and an important strategic partner in the Middle East. The resolution we are about to vote on recognizes the historic significance of the 50th anniversary of the reestablishment of the sovereign and independent modern State of Israel. The resolution commends the people of Israel for their remarkable achievements in building a new State and a pluralistic democratic society in the Middle East in the face of terrorism, hostility, and belligerence by many of her neighbors. It reaffirms the bonds of friendship and cooperation which have existed between the United States and Israel for a half a century and which have been significant and beneficial to both of our countries. Of course, it finally extends our warmest congratulations and best wishes for the State of Israel and for her people for a future of peace, prosperity, and success. Mr. Speaker, yesterday on the White House lawn, in a magnificent ceremony, President Clinton was awarded an honorary doctorate from Israel's leading university, the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. During the course of his acceptance speech, among others, the President had these ideas to share with us: I accept this honor today, he said, on behalf of my predecessors, beginning with Harry Truman, nine American Presidents all devoted to Israel's security and freedom, all committed to peace in the Middle East. I accept it on behalf of the American people who have formed, not just an alliance, but a profound friendship with the people of Israel over these last 50 years. Today we celebrate those extraordinary 50 years. In 1948, Israel arose from the seeds of the Diaspora and the ashes of the Holocaust. The children of Abraham and Sarah, survivors of 2,000 years of exile and persecution, were home at last and free at last. For its founders, the Israeli State was, however, about even more than securing a haven for the Jewish people after centuries of suffering and wandering. Isaiah prophesied that Israel would become a light unto the nations, and David Ben-Gurion, the first President of this new nation, and his allies set out to make that prophesy come true by establishing a society of light, embracing what Ben-Gurion called the higher virtues of truth and justice and compassion. Ben-Gurion, Mr. Speaker, believed Israel could lead the world to a better future by marrying the ethical leadership of the ancients with the discoveries of modern science. I quote him: ``It is only by the integration of the two that the blessings of both can flourish.'' Of course, he also envisioned a third great achievement for Israel that, with the strength and wisdom and skill, Israel would build a lasting peace with its Arab neighbors. Relations between our two nations were born of another leader's courage and vision. Harry Truman brushed aside the urgings of his advisors, as he so often did, when they said, go slow, wait and see before offering Israel its recognition. For Harry Truman, supporting the State of Israel was a moral imperative rooted in his understanding of the sufferings and the dreams of Jews from Biblical times. As we learned yesterday on the White House lawn, our recognition of Israel occurred just 11 minutes after Israel proclaimed its independence. We, in becoming the first nation to recognize Israel, had one of our proudest moments. Not only that, Mr. Speaker, but 50 years later, old Harry Truman looks pretty smart. Look what Israel has done. Under a brilliant blue sky, the Israelis have built prosperous farms, planted forests, turned streets of sand into shining boulevards, raised families and welcomed the arrival of brothers and sisters from Europe and North Africa, from Russia and Ethiopia, from all over the world. They have dazzled the world with their achievements in science and scholarship and literature and art. They have built a thriving democracy. Despite the passage of 50 years, Israelis seem to practice their freedom as if they had only just gained it yesterday. They never seem to cease challenging themselves about their history, their relationship with their neighbors, the hard choices for the future. If anyone ever wonders whether there is ever a place in the world where you can have freedom and honest vigorous 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a- week, 365-day-a-year argument, go to Israel. It is truly one of the most pulsating, vibrant places on the face of this planet. Alive with thousands of sounds, prayers in dozens of languages in the Old City; young people gathered on the avenues of Tel Aviv, computer keyboards tapping; new ventures launched on the Internet; school children now conversing in Hebrew, once the language only of the sacred text, now the voice of an Israeli renaissance. The economy that has been propelled by all this energy and activity into being one of the most advanced and diversified in the world last year exported $32 billion worth of goods, 1,000 times their level of 50 years ago. High-tech companies and high-tech people. You go to Israel, it looks as if you cannot be a citizen of Israel unless you have a cell phone glued to your hand. Israelis have gone a very long way of fulfilling the first two pieces of Ben-Gurion's mission. Surely they have built an ethical, democratic society, a society which is based on modern science and technology. It has endured against unspeakable odds by prevailing again and again in battle. The valor of its soldiers and military and political leaders are legendary. But the battle for the third piece of Ben-Gurion's vision, a just and secure and lasting peace, is still being waged and still in blood and tears. Camp David brought peace between Israel and Egypt, but it cost Anwar Sadat his life. On the White House lawn, on a brilliant day in September of 1993, Yitzhak Rabin committed himself not only to an agreement with the Palestinians, but to a comprehensive peace in the Middle East. And how bravely he pursued it, but it cost him his life. Jews and Arabs who have wanted nothing more than to live quiet, normal lives are still denied that simple pleasure. Still, Mr. Speaker, as the new century dawns, the world is filled with the promise and hope that we can overcome ancient hatreds to build a modern peace for our children. From Guatemala to Mozambique and to Bosnia, and now even to Ireland, longtime antagonists have left the battle ground to find common ground. They are weary of war. They long for peace for their children and for their grandchildren. They move beyond hatred to hope. Mr. Speaker, this is a time for reconciliation around our globe. It must be a time to deepen freedom and to raise up life in the Middle East. The 21st century can and must be a century of democracy, prosperity, justice, and most of all of peace; but it can only be a century of peace if we learn not only to respect, but to honor our differences. It is in that spirit that I ask my colleagues to join me in approving this resolution, commending the State of Israel on its 50th anniversary. Mr. Speaker, I include the following for the record: Remarks by The President at Reception for The 50th Anniversary of Israel The President. Thank you very much. Mr. President, Director, all the officials of Hebrew University. Mr. Vice President, members of the Cabinet, the administration, members of the Congress. I'd like to especially thank Dr. Dunn, Dr. Nyang, Dr. Schorsch, and Richard Dreyfuss and Linda Lavin for their wonderful contributions to this day. To Ambassador and Mrs. Ben-Elissar, thank you for being here. To all of our former ambassadors to the United States and other distinguished guests from Israel, and my fellow Americans. I'd also like to ask that we give a special word of appreciation to the people who provided all that wonderful music which got us in the right frame of mind. Thank you very much. (Applause.) If you could hang around here for a month or two, I think we might get some things done--you'd keep us all in a very positive frame of mind. I am very honored to receive this degree from Hebrew University of Jerusalem--honored because its founders include Chaim Weizmann, Martin Buber, Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein; honored because it is now one of the world's leading centers of learning and research. I must say, I never expected to be doing this here. Many American universities have satellite campuses where working people like me can obtain degrees at locations near their homes and offices. (Laughter.) This is more than I ever could have anticipated. (Laughter.) President Magidor, thank you for bringing this ceremony here so that those of us who cannot go to Israel in a couple of days may share in the celebration of this magnificent 50th birthday. I accept this honor today on behalf of my predecessors, beginning with Harry Truman--nine American Presidents all devoted to Israel's security and freedom, all committed to peace in the Middle East. I accept it on behalf of the American people who have formed not just an alliance, but a profound friendship with the people of Israel over these last 50 years. Today we celebrate that extraordinary 50 years. In 1948, Israel arose from the seeds of the Diaspora and the ashes of the Holocaust. The children of Abraham and Sara, survivors of 2,000 years of exile and persecution, were home at last and free at last. For its founders, the Israeli state was, however, about even more than securing a haven for the Jewish people after centuries of suffering and wandering. Isaiah prophesied that Israel would become ``a light unto the nations,'' and David Ben-Gurion and his allies set out to make that prophecy come true by establishing a society of light, embracing what Ben-Gurion called the higher virtues of truth, justice, and compassion. Ben-Gurion believed Israel could lead the world to a better future by marrying the ethical teachings of the ancients with the discoveries of modern science. ``It is only by the integration of the two,'' he wrote, ``that the blessings of both can flourish.'' Of course, he also envisioned a third great achievement for Israel that, with strength and wisdom and skill, Israel would build a lasting peace with its Arab neighbors. As we have heard today, relations between our two nations were born of another leader's courage and vision. Harry Truman brushed aside the urgings of his advisors, as he often did, when they said go slow, wait and see, before offering Israel recognition. For him, supporting a Jewish homeland was a moral imperative rooted in his understanding of the sufferings and dreams of the Jews from biblical times. And as we learned from Richard's wonderful reading, it occurred just 11 minutes after Israel proclaimed independence. We, in becoming the first country to recognize Israel, had one of our proudest moments. (Applause.) Not only that, 50 years later, old Harry Truman looks pretty smart. (Laughter.) Look what Israel has done. Under a brilliant blue sky, the Israelis have built prosperous farms and kibitzes, planted forests, turned streets of sand into shining boulevards, raised families and welcomed the arrival of brothers and sisters from Europe and North Africa, from Russia and Ethiopia, and America. Israelis have dazzled the world with achievements in science and scholarship, in literature and the art. They have built a thriving democracy. And despite the passage of 50 years, Israelis seem to love and practice their freedom as if they had only just gained it. They never seem to cease challenging themselves about their history, their relationship with their neighbors, the hard choices for the future. If anyone ever wonders whether there is ever a place in the world where you can have freedom and honest, vigorous, 24-hour-a-day, seven- day-a-week, 365-day-a-year argument, go to Israel. (Laughter and Applause.) It is truly one of the most pulsating, vibrant places on Earth--alive with thousands of sounds, prayers in dozens of languages in the Old City; young people gathered on the avenues of Tel Aviv, computer keyboards tapping; new ventures launched on the Internet; school children now conversing in Hebrew, once the language only of sacred text now the voice of an Israeli renaissance. And the economy has been propelled by all this energy and activity into being one of the most advanced and diversified in the world--per capita income now matching nations in Europe; exports last year were $32 billion dollars, 1,000 times their level in 1948. Hi-tech companies, hi-tech people. You go to Israel, it looks as if you can't be a citizen of Israel unless you have a cell phone glued to your hand. (Laughter.) Yes, Israelis have gone a very long way toward fulfilling the first two pieces of Ben-Gurion's vision. Surely they have built an ethical, democratic society, and a modern science and technology-based economy. It has endured against great odds by prevailing again and again in battle. The valor of citizen soldiers and military and political leaders like Golda Meir, Moshe Dayan, Yonnie Netanyahu. But the battle for the third piece of Ben-Gurion's vision-- a just, secure and lasting peace--is still being waged and still in blood and tears. Camp David brought piece between Israel and Egypt, but it cost Anwar Sadat his life. Here on this very spot, on a brilliant day in September of 1993, Yitzhak Rabin committed himself not only to an agreement with Mr. Arafat, but to a comprehensive peace in the Middle East. How bravely he pursued it. But it cost him his life. Jews and Arabs who have wanted nothing more than to live quiet, normal lives are still denied that simple pleasure. Still as the new century dawns, the world is filled with the promise and hope that we can overcome ancient hatreds to build a modern peace for our children. From Guatemala to Mozambique to Bosnia, and now even to the land of my ancestors in Ireland, longtime antagonists have left the battleground to find common ground. They are weary of war. They long for peace for their children. They move beyond hatred to hope. This is a time for reconciliation around the world. It must be a time to deepen freedom and raise up life in the Middle East. The 21st century can and must be a century of democracy, prosperity and justice, and of course, of peace. But it can be only if we learn not only to respect, but to honor our differences. The Middle East can build on the momentous achievements of its Nobel Prize winners--Begin and Sadat, Arafat, Peres and Rabin--so that all its children may grow up without fear. In a land holy to three great religions, sacred sites for Islam, Judaism and Christianity exist side by side. If there is so much history there, the children of all that history should be able to live together. Again and again, extremists have sought to derail peace with bullets and bombs. Again and again, they demonstrate the real divisions today are not between Jews and Arabs, but between those stuck in the past and those who long for a better future; between those paralyzed by hatred and those energized by hope; those who stand with clenched fists and those who reach out with open hands. We cannot let the extremists prevail. Israel can fulfill its full promise by drawing on the courage and vision of its founders to achieve peace with security. Never has the opportunity been more real and it must not be lost. You know, I was sitting here on the stage today listening to everything that was said and thinking of all the great gifts that Israel has given the United States. In 1963, 35 years ago this year, when Israel was still a young nation and President Kennedy was killed, your then-United Nations Ambassador, Mr. Eban, gave an enormous gift to the American people in all of our pain by putting in one short, terse sentence how we all felt when he said, tragedy is the difference between what is and what might have been. As we look ahead to tomorrow, let us define triumph by turning his formula on its head. Triumph is when there is no difference between what might have been and what (Applause.) Let us in the United States say that we will stand by Israel, always foursquare for its security, always together in friendship, but we want this debate to continue until there is no difference between what might have been and what is. (Applause.) We look at Hebrew University and see all three pieces of David Ben-Gurion's dream coming to life. We see biologists developing techniques to locate a single cancer cell among millions of healthy ones. We see the moral commitment to keeping people's health among the scientists there. We see Hebrew University researchers undertaking efforts in cooperation with Palestinian researchers in East Jerusalem. One of the participants in the project said, it's science and peace together. We know that much more is possible. We must understand that much more is essential. Fifty years from now the 21st century will near its midpoint and Israel will have a 100th birthday celebration. Sure as the world, our grandchildren will be hanging around here on this lawn. What do you think they'll be able to say? And what will they be celebrating? It is my dream that on that 100th anniversary, people from every country in the Middle East will gather in the Holy Land, and all the land will be holy to all of them. As a Christian, I do not know how God, if He were to come to Earth, would divide the land over which there is dispute now. I suspect neither does anyone else in this audience. But I know that if we all pray for the wisdom to do God's will, chances are we will find a way to close the gap in the next couple of years between what might be and what is. I think that is what we owe the founders of Israel--to finish Ben- Gurion's dream. Thank you and God bless you all. (Applause.)

Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to yield 3 minutes to my distinguished colleague, the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Vento).

Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, in conclusion, I would like to make a few observations concerning this anniversary. I suspect the most important thing we need to congratulate Israel on is that it survived. It survived in an atmosphere and in a climate of unrelenting hostility. We need to congratulate this small land for having remained democratic. We must commend it for having successfully concluded peace agreements with Egypt in 1979 and with Jordan in 1994. We must commend it for having withstood terrorist assaults that continue to this very day. In calendar 1997, 463 terrorist attacks were launched against Israel, and an additional 100 were foiled. Iraq, during the Persian Gulf War, lobbed ballistic missiles on the largest city in Israel. I was there. Just earlier this year, Mr. Speaker, Israeli citizens, men, women and children, were queueing up for gas masks when the climate in the Persian Gulf indicated that they might again be subjected to Iraqi attacks. They were buying antidotes for anthrax. I think it is important to recognize that if this small land of great history and great future is to celebrate its 100th birthday 50 years from now, it and it alone will need to determine its basic perimeters of its own security requirements. We can play a critical role, and must play a critical role, in mediating, lubricating, facilitating. But just as any other nation on the face of this planet, it is only the people of Israel who, in the final analysis, can determine what are the minimum requirements for their own security. It is in that spirit that I ask my colleagues to approve this resolution. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from American Samoa (Mr. Faleomavaega), my good friend who has been a steadfast friend and supporter of the independence and security of the State of Israel. (Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Rothman).

Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. Rosa DeLauro), my good friend and colleague and a strong friend of Israel.

Mr. LANTOS

Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my good friend from California for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I want to add my words of best wishes and sorrow at our colleague's decision to leave. The gentleman from New York (Mr. Solomon) has been one of the most energetic, committed, serious, decent Members of this body. I have had the privilege and pleasure of working with him on a wide range of issues, but two of those stand out in my memory. One, of course, was his determination to get to the bottom of the POW-MIA issue. And the second one, a generic issue, was his passionate commitment to human rights. As the Democratic chairman of the Human Rights caucus, I never had a more dependable and reliable ally on any human rights issue than the gentleman from the State of New York. He passionately felt the plight and pain of people persecuted or discriminated against anywhere on the face of this planet, and his strong voice for human rights will be sorely missed. I also want to join the gentleman from New York (Mr. Gilman) and my friend the gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier) in expressing our best wishes to his very fine wife, who was a full partner and companion in all of his endeavors, and to all of his fine children. And I am sure on our side all of us deeply regret his departure.

Mr. LANTOS

Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, today representatives of the Congress, the Administration, and the Supreme Court gathered in the Great Rotunda of this historic building for the National Civic Commemoration to remember the victims of the Holocaust. This annual national memorial service pay tribute to the six million Jews who died through senseless and systematic Nazi terror and brutality. At this somber commemoration, we also honored those heroic American and other Allied forces who liberated the Nazi concentration camps over half a century ago. Mr. Speaker, this past week Fortune Magazine (April 13, 1998) devoted several pages to an article entitled ``Everything in History was Against Them,'' which profiles five survivors of Nazi savagery who came to the United States penniless and built fortunes here in their adopted homeland. It is significant, Mr. Speaker, that four of these five are residents of my home state of California. Mr. Jack Tramiel of the San Francisco Bay Area, was one of the five that Fortune Magazine selected to highlight in this extraordinary article, and I want to pay tribute to him today. Jack Tramiel, like the other four singled out by Fortune Magazine, has a unique story, but there are common threads to these five tales of personal success. The story of the penniless immigrant who succeeds in America is a familiar theme in our nation's lore, but these stories involve a degree of courage and determination unmatched in the most inspiring of Horatio Alger's stories. These men were, in the words of author Carol J. Loomis, ``Holocaust survivors in the most rigorous sense,'' they ``actually experienced the most awful horrors of the Holocaust, enduring a Nazi death camp or a concentration camp or one of the ghettos that were essentially holding pens for those camps.'' They picked themselves up ``from the very cruelest of circumstances, they traveled to America and prospered as businessmen. They did it, to borrow a phrase from Elie Wiesel, when everything in history was against them.'' They were teenagers or younger when World War II began. They lost six years of their youth and six years of education. ``they were deprived of liberty and shorn of dignity. All lost relatives, and most lost one or both parents. Each . . . was forced to live constantly with the threat of death and the knowledge that next time he might be `thumbed' not into a line of prisoners allowed to live, but into another line headed for the gas chambers.'' Through luck and the sheer will to survive, these were some of the very fortunate who lived to tell the story of that horror. The second part of their stories is also similar--a variant of the American dream. These courageous men came to the United States with ``little English and less money.'' Despite their lack of friends and mentors, they found the drive to succeed. As Loomis notes, ``many millions who were unencumbered by the heavy, exhausting baggage of the Holocaust had the same opportunities and never reached out of seize them as these men did.'' Their success in view of the immense obstacles that impeded their path makes their stories all the more remarkable. One other element that is also common to these five outstanding business leaders--they are ``Founders'' of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum here in Washington, D.C. They have shown a strong commitment to remembering the brutal horrors of the Holocaust, paying honor to its victims, and working to prevent the repetition of this vicious inhumanity. Mr. Speaker, Jack Tramiel is one of the five Holocaust survivors and leading American entrepreneurs highlighted in this article. Jack began as a typewriter repairman and moved on to establish his own firm, Commodore, which initially manufactured typewriters and adding machines. In 1976 he moved into the field of computers and took Commodore to $700 million in sales in 1983. As we here in the Congress mark the annual Days of Remembrance in honor of the victims of Nazi terror, I am inserting the profile of Jack Tramiel from Fortune Magazine be placed in the Record. Jack Tramiel--Silicon Valley Founder, Commodore Intl. Only 10 when the Nazis marched into his city of Lodz, Poland, in 1939, Jack Tramiel (then named Idek Tramielski) initially had a kid's thrilled reaction to the sheer spectacle of the scene: weapons glinting in the sun, soldiers goose-stepping, planes overhead. ``It was a fantastic thing,'' he remembers. Reality crashed down after that. Lodz's Jews--one-third of the city's 600,000 people--were ordered out of their homes and into a crowded ghetto. For nearly five years Jack (an only child) and his parents lived there in one room, scavenged for food, and worked--his father at shoemaking, Jack in a pants factory. The faces that the Tramiels saw in the ghetto changed constantly: Jews left, new Jews came in, often from other countries. Later Tramiel learned that the Jewish leader of the ghetto was parceling out its residents to the Germans, believing that the community would be left in relative peace as long as he periodically delivered up a contingent of its residents for deportation--and no doubt extermination. In August 1944 the Tramiels themselves were herded into railroad cars, told they were going to Germany to better themselves, and instead shipped to Auschwitz. Jack's most vivid memory of the three-day trip is that each person received a whole loaf of bread as a ration--a feast beyond his imagination. At journey's end, the men were separated from the women (at which point Jack lost track of his mother) and then themselves split into two groups, one permitted for the time being to live, the other sent to Auschwitz's gas chambers. Jack and his father were thumbed into the group that survived. A few weeks later, Jack and his father were ``examined'' by the notorious Dr. Josef Mengele and thumbed again into a survivors line. ``What do you mean--examine?'' Tramiel is asked. ``He touched my testicles. He judged whether we were strong enough to work.'' Having passed, Tramiel and his father were transported to a spot just outside Hanover, Germany, and there set to building a concentration camp into whose barracks they themselves moved. In weather that was often bitter cold, they worked in thin, pajama-like garments, and they grew increasingly emaciated on a deprivation diet: watery ``soup'' and bread in the morning, and a potato, bread, and more ``soup'' at night. By December 1944 the Tramiels were assigned to different work crews and seeing each other only occasionally. At one of their meetings the father told the son that many young people in the camp were managing to smuggle food to their elders--and why hadn't Jack done that for his father? Stung, Jack studied for days how to deal with an electric fence that stood between him and an SS kitchen and finally succeeded in burrowing his thin frame under it to steal food--one potato and some peels. But when he got the food to his father, malnutrition had gripped the older man and grossly swollen his body. He could not eat. Soon after, he died in the camp's infirmary. Later, Jack learned that the death was directly caused by an injection of gasoline into his father's veins. As the winter stretched into the spring of 1945, Jack Tramiel himself grew increasingly fatalistic. But then a strange end-of-the-war tableau unfolded. First, the Germans vanished from the camp; second, the Red Cross moved in briefly, overfed the prisoners to the point that some died, and then left; third, the Germans returned and then vanished again. On their heels came two American soldiers--``20-foot- tall black men, the first blacks I'd ever seen,'' says Tramiel--who loomed in a barracks door, peered at the prisoners hiding beneath the straw of their bunks, said something in English that one Jew gleaned as ``More Americans will be coming,'' and left. Next a tank rolled up. In it stood a Jewish chaplain in dress uniform, who declared in Yiddish: ``You are free,'' and told the tank to move on. These were troops of the advancing American Army, the month was April 1945, and Tramiel was 16. Tramiel, today 69 and a fireplug in build, stayed in Europe for more than two years after his liberation, and many of his recollections of those days concern food: how he tricked his way into a sanitarium to a rich, and shamefully fattening, diet; how he gorged happily while working in an American Army kitchen; how he did other odd jobs for ``money or food.'' But he also learned during this time that his mother was alive and back again in Lodz. He saw her there but then left, resolved by that time to marry a concentration-camp survivor he'd met, Helen Goldgrub, and go with her to the U.S. The two wed in Germany in July 1947. They got to the U.S. separately, though--he first, in November of that year. His confidence, strengthened by what he'd survived, bordered on hubris: ``I figured I could handle just about anything,'' he says. He started out living at a Jewish agency, HIAS, in New York City; got a job as a handyman at a Fifth Avenue lamp store; learned English from American movies; and at their end pigged out on chocolate instead of eating regular dinners. Then, in early 1948, he did the improbable, joining the U.S. Army. By the time he left it four years later, he'd been reunited with his wife and fathered a son (the first of three). The Army had also pointed him to a career by putting him in charge of repairing office equipment in the New York City area. When Tramiel checked back into civilian life, he entered a long period of close encounters with machines that typed words and manipulated numbers. He first worked, at $50 a week, for a struggling typewriter-repair shop. Using his Army connections, Tramiel got the owner a contract to service several thousand machines. ``The guy flipped,'' says Tramiel, but did not give his enterprising employee a raise. ``I have no intention of working for people who have no brains,'' said Tramiel to the owner, and quit. Tramiel then bought a typewriter shop in the Bronx. He did repair work for Fordham University and, when he once got a chance to buy scads of used typewriters, rebuilt and resold them. He next prepared to import machines from Italy, but found he could get the import exclusivity he wanted only by moving to Canada. It was in Toronto, in 1955, that he founded a company he called Commodore, an importer and eventually a manufacturer of both typewriters and adding machines. Why Commodore? Because Tramiel wanted a name with a military ring and because higher ranks, such as General and Admiral, were already taken. Commodore went public in 1962 at a Canadian bargain- basement price of $2.50 a share--a deal that raised funds Tramiel needed to pay off big loans he'd gotten from a Canadian financier named C. Powell Morgan, head of Atlantic Acceptance. Deep trouble erupted in the mid-1960s when Atlantic, to which Commodore was almost joined at the hip, went bankrupt, amid charges of fraudulent financial statements, dummy companies, and propped stock prices. Tramiel was never charged with illegalities, but an investigative commission concluded that he was probably not blameless. In any case, the Canadian financial establishment ostracized him. Struggling to keep Commodore itself out of bankruptcy, he was forced in 1966 to give partial control of the company to Canadian investor Irving Gould. Commodore's line then was still typewriters and adding machines, but the electronics revolution was under way and setting up shop in Silicon Valley. Tramiel himself moved there in the late 1960s and soon, displaying a speed-to- market talent that has characterized his whole life, had Commodore pumping out electronic calculators. In time, one product, a hand-held calculator, grew so popular that it was self-destructive: The company that supplied Commodore with semiconductor chips, Texas Instruments, decided to produce calculators itself--selling them at prices that Commodore couldn't match. With Commodore again reeling, Tramiel vowed never again to be at the mercy of a vital supplier. In 1976 he made a momentous acquisition: MOS Technology, a Pennsylvania chip manufacturer that also turned out to be extravagantly nurturing about 200 different R&D projects. Tramiel, a slash- and-burn, early-day Al Dunlap in management style, killed most of the projects immediately. But he listened hard when an engineer named Chuck Peddle told him the company had a chip that was effectively a microcomputer. And small computers, said Peddle, ``are going to be the future of the world.'' Willing to take a limited gamble, Tramiel told Peddle that he and Tramiel's second son, Leonard, then getting a Columbia University astrophysics degree, had six months to come up with a computer Commodore could display at an upcoming Comdex electronics show. They made the deadline. ``And everyone loved the product,'' says Tramiel, relishingly rolling out its name, PET, for Personal Electronic Transactor. Unfortunately, this was potentially an expensive pet, carrying a lot of risk--and demanding, says Tramiel, ``a lot of money I still did not have.'' So he determined to gauge demand by running newspaper ads that offered six-week delivery on a computer priced at $599, a seductive figure on which Tramiel thought he could still make a profit. The ads appeared, and a hugely encouraging $3 million in checks came back. Commodore got to the market with its computer in 1977, in the same year that Apple and Tandy put their micros on sale. In the next few years, Tramiel drove those competitors and others wild by combatively pushing prices down and down, to levels like $200. He also became famous for rough treatment of suppliers, customers, and executives--and about it all was fiercely unrepentant. ``Business is war,'' he said. ``I don't believe in compromising. I believe in winning.'' Which is what he did in those early years for computers, leading Commodore to $700 million in sales in fiscal 1983 and $88 million in profits. At its peak price in those days, the stock that Tramiel had sold in 1962 at a price of $2.50 a share was up to $1,200, and his 6.5% slice of the company was worth $120 million. But then, in early 1984, just as annual sales were climbing above $1 billion, Tramiel clashed with a Commodore stockholder mightier than he, Irving Gould--and when the smoke had cleared, Tramiel was out. The nature of their quarrel was never publicly disclosed. Today, however, Tramiel says he wanted to ``grow'' the comapny, and Gould didn't. Commodore was really Tramiel's last hurrah. True, he surfaced again quickly in the computer industry, agreeing later in 1984 to take over--for a pittance--Warner Communications' foundering Atari operation. But in a business changing convulsively as IBM brought out its PC and the clones marched in, Atari was a loser and ultimately a venture into which Tramiel was unwilling to sink big money. Eventually he folded Atari into a Silicon Valley disk-drive manufacturer, KTS, in which he has a major interest but plays no operational role. Today Tramiel is basically retired and managing his money. From four residences, he's cut down to one, a palatial house atop a foothill in Monte Sereno, Calif. In its garage are two Rolls-Royces, a type of luxury to which Tramiel has long been addicted. Naturally, charity fundraisers took Tramiel up. When those for the Holocaust Memorial Museum appeared, he at first thought of it as just one more philanthropic cause to be supported. But his wife, Helen, 69, who spent her concentration camp days at Bergen-Belsen, is intensely aware that both she and her husband survived what millions of other Jews did not. ``No,'' she said adamantly, ``for this one we have to go all out.''

Mr. LANTOS

Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, today representatives of the Congress, the Administration, and the Supreme Court gathered in the Great Rotunda of this historic building for the National Civic Commemoration to remember the victims of the Holocaust. This annual national memorial service pays tribute to the six million Jews who died through senseless and systematic Nazi terror and brutality. At this somber commemoration, we also honored those heroic American and other Allied forces who liberated the Nazi concentration camps over half a century ago. Mr. Speaker, this past week Fortune Magazine, April 13, 1998, devoted several pages to an article entitled ``Everything in History was Against Them,'' which profiles five survivors of Nazi savagery who came to the United States penniless and built fortunes here in their adopted homeland. Mr. William Konar of Rochester, New York, was one of the five that Fortune Magazine selected to highlight in this extraordinary article, and I want to pay tribute to him today. William Konar, like the other four singled out by Fortune Magazine, has a unique story, but there are common threads to these five tales of personal success. The story of the penniless immigrant who succeeds in America is a familiar theme in our nation's lore, but these stories involve a degree of courage and determination unmatched in the most inspiring of Horatio Alger's stories. These men were, in the words of author Carol J. Loomis, ``Holocaust survivors in the most rigorous sense,'' they ``actually experienced the most awful horrors of the Holocaust, enduring a Nazi death camp or a concentration camp or one of the ghettos that were essentially holding pens for those camps.'' They picked themselves up ``from the very cruelest of circumstances, they traveled to America and prospered as businessmen. They did it, to borrow a phrase from Elie Wiesel, when everything in history was against them.'' They were teenagers or younger when World War II began. They lost six years of their youth and six years of education. ``They were deprived of liberty and shorn of dignity. All lost relatives, and most lost one or both parents. Each . . . was forced to live constantly with the threat of death and the knowledge that next time he might be ``thumbed'' not into a line of prisoners allowed to live, but into another line headed for the gas chambers.'' Through luck and the sheer will to survive, these were some of the very fortunate who loved to tell the story of that horror. The second part of their stories is also similar--a variant of the American dream. These courageous men came to the United States with ``little English and less money.'' Despite their lack of friends and mentors, they found the drive to succeed. As Loomis notes, ``many millions who were unencumbered by the heavy, exhausting baggage of the Holocaust had the same opportunities and never reached out to seize them as these men did.'' Their success in view of the immense obstacles that impeded their path makes their stories all the more remarkable. One other element that is also common to these five outstanding business leaders--they are ``Founders'' of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum here in Washington, DC. They have shown a strong commitment to remembering the brutal horrors of the Holocaust, paying honor to its victims, and working to prevent the repetition of this vicious inhumanity. Mr. Speaker, William Konar is one of the five Holocaust survivors and leading American entrepreneurs highlighted in this article. Mr. Konar was extremely successful in developing a chain of 84 discount drugstores, and he has been active and successful in real estate after selling the drugstore operation. As we here in the Congress mark the annual Days of Remembrance in honor of the victims of Nazi terror, I am inserting the profile of William Konar from Fortune Magazine be placed in the Record. William Konar

Mr. LANTOS

Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, today representatives of the Congress, the Administration, and the Supreme Court gathered in the Great Rotunda of this historic building for the National Civic Commemoration to remember the victims of the Holocaust. This annual national memorial service pays tribute to the six million Jews who died through senseless and systematic Nazi terror and brutality. At this somber commemoration, we also honored those heroic American and other Allied forces who liberated the Nazi concentration camps over half a century ago. Mr. Speaker, this past week Fortune Magazine (April 13, 1998) devoted several pages to an article entitled ``Everything in History was Against Them,'' which profiles five survivors of Nazi savagery who came to the United States penniless and built fortunes here in their adopted homeland. It is significant, Mr. Speaker, that four of these five are residents of my home state of California. Mr. Sigi Ziering of Los Angeles was one of the five that Fortune Magazine selected to highlight in this extraordinary article, and I want to pay tribute to him today. Sigi Ziering, like the other four singled out by Fortune Magazine, has a unique story, but there are common threads to these five tales of personal success. The story of the penniless immigrant who succeeds in America is a familiar theme in our nation's lore, but these stories involve a degree of courage and determination unmatched in the most inspiring of Horatio Alger's stories. These men were, in the words of author Carol J. Loomis, ``Holocaust survivors in the most rigorous sense,'' they ``actually experienced the most awful horrors of the Holocaust, enduring a Nazi death camp or a concentration camp or one of the ghettos that were essentially holding pens for those camps.'' They picked themselves up ``from the very cruelest of circumstances, they traveled to America and prospered as businessmen. They did it, to borrow a phrase from Elie Wiesel, when everything in history was against them.'' They were teenagers or younger when World War II began. They lost six years of their youth and six years of education. ``They were deprived of liberty and shorn of dignity. All lost relatives, and most lost one or both parents. Each . . . was forced to live constantly with the threat of death and the knowledge that next time he might be `thumbed' not into a line of prisoners allowed to live, but into another line headed for the gas chambers.'' Through luck and the sheer will to survive, these were some of the very fortunate who lived to tell the story of that horror. The second part of their stories is also similar--a variant of the American dream. These courageous men came to the United States with ``little English and less money.'' Despite their lack of friends and mentors, they found the drive to succeed. As Loomis notes, ``many millions who were unencumbered by the heavy, exhausting baggage of the Holocaust had the same opportunities and never reached out to seize them as these men did.'' Their success in view of the immense obstacles that impeded their path makes their stories all the more remarkable. One other element that is also common to these five outstanding business leaders--they are ``Founders'' of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum here in Washington, D.C. They have shown a strong commitment to remembering the brutal horrors of the Holocaust, paying honor to its victims, and working to prevent the repetition of this vicious inhumanity. Mr. Speaker, Sigi Ziering is one of the five Holocaust survivors and leading American entrepreneurs highlighted in this article. Sigi is the Chairman of Diagnostic Products Corporation in Los Angeles. As we here in the Congress mark the annual Days of Remembrance in honor of the victims of Nazi terror, I am inserting the profile of Sigi Ziering from Fortune Magazine to be placed in the Record. Sigi Ziering, Los Angeles, Chairman, Diagnostic Products Corp. Holocaust survivors, the saying goes, are conditioned not to cry. But on May 8, 1997, when the founders of the Holocaust Memorial Museum met for a reunion--and when the flags of 32 U.S. Army divisions that had liberated the concentration camps were paraded into the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol--Sigi Ziering, today a serious, reflective man of 70, wept. He spoke of this moment in a speech: ``Today I cried because the worst memory of the ghetto and the camps was the feeling of total isolation and total abandonment by the rest of the world. This feeling of utter despair and hopelessness weighed more heavily on us than the constant hunger, the beatings, and the imminent death facing us every minute.'' His tears, he said, were for the millions who never got to see the flags. His own ordeal began in Kassel, Germany, where his father, a Polish citizen, was a clothing merchant. In 1939 the father fled to England, expecting his wife and two children--Sigi (then officially Siegfried), 11, and Herman, 12--to follow as soon as they, too, could get visas. Instead, they became trapped in Germany. The three scraped by until late 1941, when the Germans summarily transported 1,000 Jews, the Zierings included, to Rigi, Latvia. Some of the adult men in the group were sent directly to a nearby death camp, and the rest of the Jews were installed in a ghetto bloodstained from murders just carried out. Of the entire 1,000, Sigi Ziering believes that only 16 survived the war, among them, besides himself, his mother and brother. In Riga the boys actually went to school for a while. But their mother, wanting the Germans to think them useful, required them to drop out and work. Once Sigi had a plum job in a ``fish hall,'' from which he was able to smuggle food back to the ghetto. As he sneaked in with the food, he would sometimes pass dead Jews who had been caught doing the same and been hanged in the streets as an example. Toward war's end, with the Russians closing in on Riga, the Germans began to move their Jewish captives around. Ziering believes that the SS in fact connived to keep small groups of Jews alive, so that the need to guard them would keep the Germans from being sent to the front. The Zierings were moved to a German prison, Fuhlsbuttel, on the outskirts of Hamburg. Prison living conditions were a distinct step up. But every week the Germans would load eight or ten Jews into a truck and transport them to Bergen-Belsen for elimination. ``With German precision,'' says Ziering, the guards went at their job alphabetically--and never got to ``Z.'' British troops then closed off Bergen-Belsen, and the Germans marched their remaining Jews to a Kiel concentration camp, whose commandant's first words upon seeing them were: ``I can't believe that Jews still exist.'' The camps grisly conditions killed 40 to 50 inmates daily. Another 35 males were murdered when they could not run a kilometer while carrying a heavy piece of wood. Sigi and his brother passed that test. Then, as the Zierings heard the story, Count Folke Bernadotte of Sweden offered to pay Heinrich Himmler $5 million for 1,000 Jews. (Whether the Count indeed made this offer or paid the money is not clear.) A German officer told the Ziering boys, who believed it not at all, that they were to be included but were unpresentable in the striped clothing they wore. Sigi and his brother were taken to a mortuary, where they were directed to strip the clothes from the corpses that lay there and make them their own. And on May 1, 1945, Red Cross workers arrived to take the 1,000 to Sweden. The route lay through Copenhagen, and at its railroad station, the Jews heard excited shouts: ``Hitler is dead.'' As if he'd suddenly awakened from a nightmare of unimaginable horror, Sigi then entered into a world of near- normalcy for a 17-year-old. His family managed to reunite in London, where the father--``a fantastic businessman,'' says Sigi--was doing well as a diamond merchant. Sigi, a bare five years of elementary education behind him, entered a tutorial school and then the University of London. He wished to be a doctor but found that almost all medical school spots were reserved for war veterans--the kind who'd worn military insignia, not tattooted numbers. Hunting opportunity, the Ziering family made it to the U.S. in 1949, settling in Brooklyn. Working part-time, Sigi earned a physics degree at Brooklyn College and then two advanced degrees at Syracuse University. In those college years, he met the woman he soon married, Marilyn Brisman. When they first met, she says, he was ``quiet, sweet, introspective,'' and, with his blond hair, blue eyes, and accent, so resembled the archetype of a young German that she briefly thought him one. Exiting academe in 1957, Ziering did nuclear-reactor work with Raytheon in Boston and then space projects at Allied Research. The entrepreneurial urge hit, and with a friend he started a company called Space Sciences to carry out cost- plus government contracts. It was the heyday of avaricious conglomerates, and in 1968 Whittaker Corp. bought Space Sciences for about $1.8 million. That made Ziering, not yet 25 years removed from the terrifying alphabetical lock step of Fuhlsbuttel prison, well-to-do. But the deal also made him a California-based research executive restless in Whittaker's conglomerate culture. He left and tried one entrepreneurial venture, the making of fishmeal, that failed. Then, in 1973, he heard by chance of a chemist working out of his Los Angeles kitchen, Robert Ban, who'd developed radioimmunoassay (RIA) diagnostic kits that permitted the measurement of infinitesimally low concentrations of substances--drugs and hormones, for example--in bodily fluids. Ban, a man with big ideas and a corporate name to match them, Diagnostic Products Corp., had been advertising in a professional journal that he had upwards of 30 different RIA kits available. Some of these, says Ziering, ``do not exist to this day,'' but that was not known to the journal's readers, and sacks of orders-- though only morsels of money--landed in Ban's kitchen. Ziering, warmed to the gamble by his long-standing interest in medicine, put $50,000 into the business and moved the chemist into a small factory that mainly produced one kit of particular commercial value. The business took off. But the partners were not getting along. So Ziering bought the chemist out for $25,000 and settled back to working with a more compatible partner, his wife, who has throughout the years been a DPC marketing executive. Today their company, competing with such giants as Abbott Laboratories, has more than 1,400 employees and is a leading manufacturer of both diagnostic kits and the analytical instruments needed to read their findings. The company had 1997 sales of $186 million and profits of $18 million. DPC went public in 1982, though Ziering wishes it hadn't--the company has never really needed the money it raised, and he doesn't like the volatility of the market or the second- guessing of analysts--and he, his wife, their two sons (both in the business), and two daughters own about 24% of its stock, currently worth about $95 million. Through most of its years, DPC has done well internationally, a fact that has required Ziering and his wife to travel often to Germany. Yes, it bothers him to go back, but he thinks that his encounters with young Germans disturb them more than him. When they get a hint of how he spent the war, he says, ``you can feel the static electricity in the air.'' In his business, says Marilyn Ziering, her husband is patient and visionary, but also a risk taker when he needs to be. He himself says he's a workaholic and muses as to why. He wonders whether the ``training'' of the Holocaust--``unless you work, you are destined for the gas chamber''--may not have permanently bent him and many other survivors to work. The license plate on Ziering's Jaguar reads ``K9HORA.'' That's a rough phonetic rendition of kayn aynhoreh, a Yiddish expression meaning ``ward off the evil eye.'' It is customarily tacked to the end of a thought, as a superstitious precaution. For these five survivors, who picked themselves up from the worst and darkest of beginnings and triumphed in the best tradition of the American dream, we might say, for example: ``Since the Holocaust, the lives of these men have been good--kayn aynhoreh.'' Or we might stitch those words to a larger thought. Of the Holocaust, Jews and the world say, ``Never again.'' In the histories of these five men, there is a ringing, opposite kind of message: ``Ever again.'' Evil weighed down their early lives. But it did not--and cannot--crush the human spirit. Kayn aynhoreh.

Mr. LANTOS

Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, on Thursday of this week, representatives of the Congress, the Administration, and the Supreme Court will gather in the Great Rotunda of this building for the National Civic Commemoration to remember the victims of the Holocaust. This annual national memorial service pays tribute to the six million Jews who died through senseless and systematic Nazi terror and brutality. At this somber commemoration, we will also honor those heroic American and other Allied forces who liberated the Nazi concentration camps over half a century ago. Mr. Speaker, this past week Fortune Magazine (April 13, 1998) devoted several pages to an article entitled ``Everything in History was Against Them,'' which profiles five survivors of Nazi savagery who came to the United States penniless and built fortunes here in their adopted homeland. It is significant, Mr. Speaker, that four of these five are residents of my home state of California. My dear friend Nathan Shapell of Los Angeles was one of the five that Fortune Magazine selected to highlight in this extraordinary article, and I want to pay tribute to him today. Nate Shapell, like the other four singled out by Fortune Magazine, has a unique story, but there are common threads to these five tales of personal success. The story of the penniless immigrant who succeeds in America is a familiar theme in our nation's lore, but these stories involve a degree of courage and determination unmatched in the most inspiring of Horatio Alger's stories. These men were, in the words of author Carol J. Loomis, ``Holocaust survivors in the most rigorous sense,'' they ``actually experienced the most awful horrors of the Holocaust, enduring a Nazi death camp or a concentration camp or one of the ghettos that were essentially holding pens for those camps.'' They picked themselves up ``from the very cruelest of circumstances, they traveled to America and prospered as businessmen. They did it, to borrow a phrase from Elie Wiesel, when everything in history was against them.'' They were teenagers or younger when World War II began. They lost six years of their youth and six years of education. ``They were deprived of liberty and shorn of dignity. All lost relatives, and most lost one or both parents. Each . . . was forced to live constantly with the threat of death and the knowledge that next time he might be `thumbed' not into a line of prisoners allowed to live, but into another line headed for the gas chambers.'' Through luck and the sheer will to survive, these were some of the very fortunate who lived to tell the story of that horror. The second part of their stories is also similar--a variant of the American dream. These courageous men came to the United States with ``little English and less money.'' Despite their lack of friends and mentors, they found the drive to succeed. As Loomis notes, ``many millions who were unencumbered by the heavy, exhausting baggage of the Holocaust had the same opportunities and never reached out to seize them as these men did.'' Their success in view of the immense obstacles that impeded their path makes their stories all the more remarkable. One other element that is also common to these five outstanding business leaders--they are ``Founders'' of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum here in Washington, D.C. They have shown a strong commitment to remembering the brutal horrors of the Holocaust, paying honor to its victims, and working to prevent the repetition of this vicious inhumanity. Mr. Speaker, Nathan Shapell is one of the five Holocaust survivors and leading American entrepreneurs highlighted in this article. Nate is the Chairman of Shapell Industries in Los Angeles. As we here in the Congress mark the annual Days of Remembrance in honor of the victims of Nazi terror, I ask that the profile of Nate Shapell from Fortune Magazine be placed in the Record. [From Fortune, April 13, 1998] Nathan Shapell--Chairman, Shapell Industries Nathan Shapell's history illustrates two truths about the Holocaust. First, by sharp and courageous use of his wits, a Jew could often greatly improve his chances of surviving. Second, in the end he practically always needed luck as well. Now 76, Shapell (originally named Schapelski) was the youngest of five children in a family that lived in the western Poland city of Sosnowiec. After the Nazis invaded Poland, though, the father and two of his children scattered, leaving Nathan, then still in his teens, the only male in a household of four. Growing up quickly, he got decent work in the city's sanitation department and also gained the favor of certain German officials by managing to get them scarcities such as textiles and meat. For nearly three years Shapell's standing with these Germans not only kept his family safe but also allowed him repeatedly to help other Jews. In the summer of 1942, however, Shapell's mother and hundreds of other Sosnowiec Jews were rounded up and incarcerated in a part of the city called Targowa. Frantic but able once more to tap the help of his Germans, Nathan got past Targowa's guards on the pretense that he was going in to survey the sanitation needs of the area. Making his way through crowds of desperate Jews, he finally found his mother, gave her food, and promised her help. But he also realized that the sanitation arm band he wore might be the key to more rescues. Later that day he told the authorities that Targowa's sanitation needs were large, and secured permission to go into the area at least daily with a small crew. Over the next few days, he and his men entered just before a shift change for the guards, with each member of his crew wearing a sanitation arm band--and with a few more arm bands stuffed into Shapell's pocket. These he gave to male prisoners, who each day exited, trying to appear nonchalant, with the crews and their refuse-loaded carts. The discovery of this ruse would almost certainly have meant death for all concerned, but the guards on the new shifts never caught on. Next Shapell focused on the huge pots of soup that were each day carried into Targowa and later taken out empty. Shapell and his men instead filled them up with small children (warned to total silence) and then boldly carried out the posts, as if they were simply helping with the day's chores. A half-dozen or so children, most thrust at the men by their parents, were rescued that way and released outside the gate. One, a small girl of 5 or 6, looked up from the street where Shapell had set her and said, ``Where shall I go?'' He answered, ``Child, I don't know. Run, run.'' As he tried to talk about that moment recently, Shapell broke down, unable to finish. In a week of arm bands and soup pots, Shapell did not manage to rescue his mother. He finally succeeded, though, on a chaotic day in which the Germans encircled all of Targowa's Jews with a gigantic noose of rope and prepared to load them up for transport. Shapell's mother escaped because Nathan, talking his way into Targowa, found her and made her lie down on a pile of dead bodies. He then contrived to get the job of removing the bodies for disposal and got his mother to safety. By the summer of 1943, though, the Nazis' vicious campaign to make Europe Judenrein--free of Jews--had wrenched the family apart and sent each of its members to a work camp or a concentration camp. The hellhole of Auschwitz-Birkenau was Nathan's lot, but there his youth and relative vigor got him thumbed into line of people to work, not die. He was then tattooed with the number he still wears: 134138. In the nearly two years of captivity, hunger, and oppression that followed, he continued to be sustained by wits, guts, and a steely resolve to survive. He smuggled food out of kitchens, hid when exposure would have meant death, and got himself classified as a carpenter though he could barely drive a nail. But there was a moment near war's end, at a work site called Gintergruber, when nothing else counted but luck. One day a prisoner in his work crew escaped. When none of the other prisoners would admit to knowledge of how he'd gotten out, SS troops lined them up--some 200 men, in ranks four deep. Shapell was in the front row. The SS counted down it, ordering the fifth man to step forward, and then the next fifth man, until ten prisoners were lined up for all to see. The ten were then shot. Shapell, in the 80% of the front line that survived, went back to work. Shapell was later moved in a forced march to a camp called Waldenburg. Freedom arrived there on May 8, 1945. No German guards came that morning to make their daily head count, and in the afternoon the camp's commandant drove out for the last time, his eyes venomous as he looked back at the prisoners watching in disbelief. The Jews then swarmed out of the camp to scavenge for food, on the way encountering Russian soldiers who were still at war, even though Germany had surrendered the day before. The world called them ``displaced persons,'' and in the next six years Shapell, 23 at the end of the war, became a leader in aiding homeless Jews who bore the label. His place of work was a small Bavarian town named Munchberg, where he established a model DP community. He oversaw the construction of houses and even set up a large home that took in Jewish children with no place to go. Wrote an American officer who had authority over Munchberg and knew himself fortunate to have crossed paths with this young refugee: ``I heartily endorse Mr. Schapelski as an energetic, efficient, trustworthy, and most capable man.'' For Nathan, Munchberg meant more than work well done. He was married there (to a Holocaust survivor) and was joined in the town by two siblings who turned out to have survived the war, Sala and David. (The remaining four members of Shapell's family are either known, or believed, to have died.) Eventually Nathan, David, and an Auschwitz friend of Nathan's who Sala married, Max Weisbrot, secured a permit to start a textile manufacturing and wholesaling business, and it did well. So it was that when the three men make it to the U.S. in the early 1950s, they had some money. They went first to Detroit because a relative lived there. But Nathan didn't like Detroit, and they traveled in search of another landing spot, thinking that either supermarkets or homebuilding might be their future. They hit California, and for Nathan it was love at first sight. ``Just the trees,'' he says today, ``just the smell from the oranges and lemons. It was unbelievable, beautiful.'' Through a Detroit connection, they met one night with a young building contractor in Los Angeles, Morley Benjamin. Knowing their English to be inadequate, the three visitors brought with them a taxi driver hired to be a translator--but he kept falling asleep. The meeting came to nothing. Some months later, though, having picked up more English, the three went back to Benjamin, and this time they struck a deal to build houses together. The Shapell group put in $600,000, and Morely Benjamin and a partner contributed expertise. In two suburbs of Los Angeles, Norwalk and Whittier, they built some 2,400 houses and sold them to veterans for $10,990 each, no money down. Nathan, the leader of this band, badgered the young builder he always called ``Mr. Benjamin` to teach him everything he knew about the business. Remembers Benjamin: ``Nathan was constantly in my office, constantly wanting to know. Once I said to him, `Nathan, do not come back for at least an hour.' '' But Benjamin says Shapell never asked the same question twice. He was, besides, a whiz with figures. In 1955 the parties split up, amiably. Shapell, with his relatives, formed S&S Construction and proceeded to build anew in Norwald. He has always had a belief, he says today, that a prudent man should keep one-third of his money in cash and another one-third in good ``stuff,` and then if he wishes, put the other one-third at risk. But in 1955 he felt the Norwalk project required the commitment of everything he had. Out of it, though, came a small profit, enough to send S&S Construction on its way. Since then the company now called Shapell Industries has built 64,000 houses and spread well beyond Lost Angeles. The company is known for high-quality building, for astute purchases of land, and for conservative financial behavior in an industry that tends to binge on leverage. Shapell himself dresses down from the elegant suits he wears in his office and ``walks'' his sites, doing hands-on quality control. He is not apt to stop those inspections soon: For three years a widower, he usually works at least six days a week and has no plans to retire. In his business history, there is a period that caused him anguish. In 1969, when his company was doing about $30 million in sales and $3 million in profits, he took it public and was immediately sorry. Impatient by nature--``he has the attention span of a gnat,'' says an acquaintance--he could not abide dealing with securities analysts. He feels, moreover, that the homebuilding business, with its cycles, weather delays, and general ups and downs, is not well suited to a public market that craves consistency. ``If you are honest and reporting exactly what happens,'' Shapell says, ``Wall Street tells you goodbye.'' His company was itself a case history in volatility. In 1981, when interest rates skyrocketed, it lost nearly $10 million on revenues that exceeded $300 million--another period of acute anguish for Shapell. By 1983, through, the company was making $15 million on revenues cut by a third. So in 1984, Shapell took his creation private, buying in the 28% of the company that the public owned for $33 million. Best money he ever spent, says Shapell: ``when we'd done the deal, I felt like a million pounds had been taken off me.`` It hardly ranks with the first, of course, but he calls that day his ``second liberation.''

Mr. LANTOS

Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, I would like to join many of my Bay Area constituents and friends of the California Masonic Grand Lodge in their 78th celebration of Public Schools Week, and I wish to pay particular tribute to San Francisco's Oriental Lodge No. 144 and Glen Park School for their meaningful commemoration of this special event. As America debates various ideas and proposals to improve education quality and standards, we should recognize those pioneers who, generations ago, committed themselves to guaranteeing every child born in our country the right to attend school. For those of us from the Bay Area, this year's Public Schools Week has a special significance. One hundred and fifty years ago this month, on April 3, 1848, the first public school in California opened on Portsmouth Square in San Francisco. Six pupils attended classes that day under the tutelage of Thomas Douglas, a Yale graduate hired by the elected Board of Trustees for the then-reasonable sum of $1,000 per year. Douglas offered his students instruction in a diverse array of subjects which included reading, writing, spelling and defining, mental and practical arithmetic, English grammar and composition, mental and moral science, ancient and modern history, chemistry and natural philosophy, geometry, trigonometry, algebra, astronomy, surveying and navigation, and Latin and Greek. While these course offerings undoubtedly proved attractive to parents and students alike--by May, enrollment had grown sixfold to 37 children--one practical subject not included in the program of instruction was geology. Instruction in this field clearly would have benefitted Douglas' students. Two months after the beginning of classes, the teacher and many of his pupils left San Francisco for the Sierra foothills in search of gold. The California Gold Rush, which began with the discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill on January 24, 1848, initially resulted in the mad dash of gold seekers from San Francisco, and this forced the school to close. Nevertheless, its legacy as the forerunner of California's outstanding system of public education is irrefutable. On April 23, 1998, Mr. Speaker, Oriental Lodge No. 144 and Glen Park School will observe Public Schools Week by remembering this significant event. The theme of the evening presentation at the school auditorium will be ``From Dream to Reality--From Portsmouth Square to Glen Park.'' The students of Grades 3, 4, and 5 will put on a multimedia presentation to focus attention on the development of public education in California amidst the tumult and upheaval of the Gold Rush. One class, I have learned, has even constructed a model of the first schoolhouse for the public to admire. The Masonic Lodge will present the school's distinguished principal, Marion Grady, with a new trophy case and a set of flags, which will be posted by the McAteer High School NROTC Color Guard. Mayor Willie L. Brown, Jr. and Anthony P. Wordlow, Grand Master of the California Masonic Grand Lodge, will join other distinguished guests at the event. Mr. Speaker, this week's celebration of Public Schools Week is a reflection of centuries of activism in support of education by the Masons and, especially, the California Grand Lodge. Public Schools Week was instituted in 1920 by then-Grand Master Charles Albert Adams in response to a post-World War I education crisis that involved a critical shortage of teachers and the closure of 1,200 schools throughout the state. Adams and his fellow Masons hoped to focus attention on the problems facing public education and, in the process, encourage citizens and legislators to seek solutions for these obstacles. For 78 years Adams and his successors have unquestionably succeeded. The California Masonic Foundation, created in 1970 to provide scholarships to deserving college students, has awarded over one million dollars to young people to help finance their educational needs. In the past year alone 129 grantees received $160,000 for this worthy purpose. The Masonic Student Assistance Program, now in its forth year, serves California's youth with programs that range from issues of substance abuse to the increasing epidemic of violence in our public schools. Local chapters, such as Oriental Lodge No. 144, have willingly and ably assisted community schools as well. In recent months, Bay Area lodges have contributed, among other noteworthy gifts, materials for a library program for Glen Park's first grade students and valuable instruments for the music program at Lincoln High School. The numerous Masonic contributions to public education in California are truly a credit to the fraternity and its outstanding members. Wednesday's event is a direct result of the determined and devoted efforts of several prominent Bay Area citizens, most notably Dr. F. Armand Magid, a forty-year educator, history scholar, and Masonic leader who has worked tirelessly in organizing this week's activities; Worshipful Master Neil A. Carlson of Oriental Lodge No. 144, whose direction and guidance have greatly aided his fraternity's numerous educational initiatives; and Principal Grady, whose obvious love for her young pupils has been shown time and time again throughout her career. In his essay, ``When Is a Man a Mason?'' the Rev. Joseph Fort Newton wrote: ``When no voice of distress reaches his ears in vain, and no hand seeks his aid without response . . . such a man has found the only real secret of Masonry.'' The Oriental Lodge No. 144 and its many dedicated members have answered this call, showing us that examples from our past can and should be used to highlight the importance of our future. Mr. Speaker, I am proud to commend the Lodge, along with Glen Park School, the McAteer High School NROTC Color Guard, and the numerous other participants in the celebration of Public School Week for their commitment to public education in the Bay Area.

Mr. LANTOS

Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, I invite my colleagues to join me in strong support of H.R. 3662, the Holocaust Assets Commission Act of 1998, which was introduced in the House by our distinguished colleague and my dear friend, the Chairman of the Banking Committee, Congressman Jim Leach of Iowa. The identical legislation, S. 1900, has been introduced in the other body by Senator Alfonse D'Amato of New York. This legislation will establish a U.S. Holocaust Assets Historical Commission to examine and locate Holocaust-era assets which came under the control of our Federal government during the tyrannical reign of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich or during the period of U.S. military occupation immediately after World War II. For several years, due the principled leadership of the Clinton Administration and its able Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, Ambassador Stuart Eizenstat, our government has worked tirelessly to seek answers to questions about Nazi investments and holdings in wartime neutral nations. Now, as Ambassador Eizenstat has eloquently stated, ``the time has come to look more closely at assets here at home--and to do so with sensitivity and urgency.'' The U.S. Holocaust Assets Commission will follow through on this important mission. Due to the dwindling population of Hitler's victims, this task becomes more and more pressing with each passing day. Under the legislation which has been introduced, the Commission will be composed of 23 Members of Congress, government officials, and private citizens. They will have the broad mandate and the responsibility to research all available information to determine assets which may have come under the control of the Federal government after January 30, 1933--the day Hitler seized power in Germany. It will work with state and local officials to locate dormant bank accounts from this era that may, after years of inactivity, have been taken into the possession of state governments. The Commission will also be authorized by this legislation to coordinate its efforts with other fact-finding endeavors currently being pursued through private and public sector channels, and to carefully review studies which may overlap with its mandate. Finally, the Commission will detail its findings in a final report to President Clinton to be issued no later than December 31, 1999. It is my sincere hope that, in cooperation with the efforts of other nations which are reviewing similar wartime issues, we can finally close this most sorry chapter of the last century before the birth of the new millennium. Mr. Speaker, this legislation builds on the dedicated efforts of Ambassador Eizenstat to seek justice for Holocaust survivors. A man of outstanding intellectual ability, unimpeachable integrity and boundless compassion, Ambassador Eizenstat is one of the finest public servants that I have met during my service as a Member of Congress. He was one of the first to champion this cause during his tenure as United States Ambassador to NATO, and he has since worked ably and devotedly to reinforce our nation's role as a moral leader on this critical matter. Last May, Ambassador Eizenstat authored a ground-breaking report issued by the Clinton Administration which analyzed and made recommendations regarding U.S. policy towards the wartime neutral countries, and in particular Switzerland. A second report, due to be released later this month, will no doubt shed an even brighter light on those bodies that did Hitler's bidding and fed his war machine and his murderous genocidal policies. In addition to these significant efforts, Ambassador Eizenstat recently joined Chairman Miles Lerman of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council to announce that a Washington Conference on Holocaust-era assets will take place at the State Department on November 9-12 of this year. This Conference will further earlier explorations of Nazi-looted assets, including artwork and insurance, and it will work to establish a broad international consensus for future actions. I am truly honored to have the privilege of working with Ambassador Eizenstat on this and other subjects of concern to the American people. Ambassador Eizenstat, Congressman Leach, and Senator D'Amato are joined by many of our distinguished colleagues in supporting H.R. 3662 and S. 1900. Original co-sponsors in the House include Congressman Benjamin A. Gilman of New York, Chairman of the House International Relations Committee, as well as Congressman Sam Gejdenson of Connecticut, Congressman Brad Sherman of California, and Congressman Jon D. Fox of Pennsylvania. In the Senate, cosponsors are Senator Barbara Boxer of California, Senator Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois, Senator Robert F. Bennett of Utah, Senator Wayne Allard of Colorado, Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, Senator Richard H. Bryan of Nevada, Senator Mike DeWine of Ohio, Senator Lauch Faircloth of North Carolina, Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, and Senator Paul S. Sarbanes of Maryland. Mr. Speaker, the Holocaust Assets Commission Act of 1998 is not a partisan issue--members on both sides of the aisle have united to support this legislation. It is not a national issue--over a dozen countries from around the world have formed similar fact-finding bodies to uncover the truth about Nazi-looted assets in their own countries. This is a moral issue. This is the final opportunity for justice for many Holocaust survivors who were powerless to defend Hitler's attempts to destroy their families, their culture, and their lives. They are getting older and their population is declining rapidly--the ``biological solution'' leaves us little time to secure for them a measure of (albeit imperfect) justice during their lifetimes. It is time for America to lead by example. I ask my colleagues to join me in strong support of H.R. 3662 to seek the truth about Holocaust assets in the United States.