May 2, 1995 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — Extensions of Remarks E 925

Baptist Members, as that same afternoon,

they also laid the cornerstone for another mission work, the East Main Street Baptist

Church, now the Loomis Park Baptist Church.

The new church faced an early disaster

when their building burned in May of 1897.

The made the decision to rebuild, and also to

become an independent church the same

year. In August of that year, they organized

with a membership of 34, and laid the foundation for their new building in October. When

finished at the end of that year, the new

church had taken the name Memorial Baptist.

The church prospered in the years leading

up to World War I. During the war, when the

school required more property, the church sold

its property to the school and moved their

church and parsonage both across the road to

their present location, at the southeast corner

of Griswold and Third. The building was greatly expanded in 1934 with an addition to the

east that increased the seating capacity to 249

in the upstairs auditorium. In 1930, the church

had begun regular broadcasts on WIBM (then

1370 kHz) that continued periodically up

through 1959.

As the church continued to grow, the facilities became much too small in the 1950’s.

The church decided to build a new facility to

accommodate the needs. Accordingly, in

1954, lots were purchased at the corner of

High and Bowen, ground was broken in 1955,

and a new building completed in 1959. When

the church moved in October 1959, the name

was changed to Cascaded Baptist Church.

The building was built for a cost of $165,000,

though valued at $250,000. Volunteer work

had greatly helped reduce costs. The mortgage was burned in November 1964.

Later, in 1978 under Paster A.R. Gould, the

church underwent a major redecorating on the

inside to give it the present warm and attractive interior. Also during Rev. Gould’s ministry,

the church undertook the ministry of Jackson

Baptist Schools, which has grown greatly to a

present enrollment of over 375 students. Recently, under present paster, Rev. Berry

Jones, the church has added a gym and band

facility to their high school. Though valued at

nearly a million dollars, the building cost much

less due to volunteer labor, and the construction was paid for almost entirely in cash.

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to salute the Cascades Baptist Church as it celebrates a century of caring. This honor is a testament to the

past members and those today whose personal interest, strong support, and active participation contributed to this accomplishment.

Their future is God’s work and I wish them

continued success.

HONORING 100 YEARS OF THE

WOODLAWN HEIGHTS TAXfPAYERS AND COMMUNITY ASSOCIATION

HON. ELIOT L. ENGEL OF NEW YORK

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Tuesday, May 2, 1995

Mr. ENGEL. Mr. Speaker, 100 years ago,

the residents of the North Bronx established a

civic organization called the Woodlawn

Heights Taxpayers and Community Association. Their motto was ‘‘To Make This a Better

Place in Which to Live.’’ And, for 100 years

they have lived this motto.

I have had the privilege to work closely with

this association on numerous community and

neighborhood projects. They have a history of

success in making Woodlawn a better place in

which to live. These successes have led to a

better Bronx and a better New York City. From

securing a neighborhood library to preventing

a discriminatory tax assessment, from spearheading beautiful programs to keeping open

the local fire station, the Woodlawn Heights

Taxpayers and Community Association has a

record of accomplishment hard to beat.

The people of Woodlawn, of the Bronx, and

of New York City have something of which to

be very proud.

To the officers past and present and to the

members of the Woodlawn Heights Taxpayers

and Community Association—Thank you for

your efforts, your hard work, and your dedication.

COMMENDING LORD BRAINE OF

WHEATLEY FOR CHAMPIONING

fTHE CASE OF RAOUL

WALLENBERG IN THE BRITISH

HOUSE OF LORDS

HON. TOM LANTOS OF CALIFORNIA

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Tuesday, May 2, 1995

Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, as we recall the

50th anniversary of the Allied victory over fascism in the Second World War, we cannot forget the individual heroes of the holocaust. The

Congress of the United States, always at the

forefront of the battle for liberty and human

rights, bestowed honorary American citizenship upon Raoul Wallenberg in recognition of

his triumphant battle to save as many as

100,000 innocent lives from certain death at

the hands of the Nazis.

There are many others around the world

who have also dedicated their lives to pursuing the truth behind Wallenberg’s disappearance into the gulag and to teaching the world

about his heroic deeds. On this day, I wish to

commend The Right Honorable Lord Braine of

Wheatley for opening debate in the House of

Lords about the lost hero of the Holocaust,

Raoul Wallenberg. Throughout his 45 years in

Parliament, Lord Braine has championed the

case of human rights. I ask my colleagues to

join me in commending Lord Braine’s lifelong

efforts, and I offer an excerpt from his opening

speech to the parliament on the 50th anniversary of Wallenberg’s disappearance.

TEXT OF PROCEEDINGS FROM THE HOUSE OF

LORDS, JANUARY 17, 1995

Lord Braine of Wheatley. My Lords, the

most terrible, heartbreaking story of man’s

gross inhumanity to man occurred during

the lifetime of many of us. It was the murder

of the majority of Europe’s Jews by the

Nazis. These innocent people, young and old,

were slaughtered—not because they posed

the remotest threat to the power of the

Nazis, but simply because of their religion. It

was genocide on a massive scale.

The victims were worked to death, tortured, shot and gassed to death and their

bodies burnt in huge incinerators. All of that

took place in organised mass killings month

after month during the Second World War. If

there is a more monstrous story of sustained

evil in human history, I have not heard of it.

In that ocean of cruelty and hate in wartime Hungary, one great heroic figure stands

out—a brave young Swedish diplomat named

Raoul Wallenberg. Indeed, he became one of

the greatest heroes of all time. In the closing

months of the Second World War, he responded to the appeals of the world Jewish

community and left neutral Sweden to do

what he could to save what remained of Hungarian Jewry.

So it was that in July 1994, Wallenberg

went to what Simon Wiesenthal has referred

to as ‘‘the slaughterhouse that was Budapest.’’ By that time some five million European Jews had already been cruelly murdered. The Nazis, aware that they were now

losing the war, were obsessed with wiping

out those who remained and were within

their reach. Four months earlier, they had

invaded Hungary with the declared purpose

of exterminating that last remaining Jewish

community in Europe. Obersturmbannfuhrer

Adolf Eichmann was given the task of liquidating the Hungarian Jewish community.

It is ironic that the Hungarian Jews, who

had survived the longest in Nazi-occupied

Europe, were now the quickest to be destroyed. In a two month period, from 15th

May to 8th July 1944, 430,000 Hungarian Jews

were deported to Auschwitz in sealed cattle

trucks.

Raoul Wallenberg became the head of a

special department of the Swedish Legation

in Budapest, charged with the task of helping the Jews wherever possible. He began by

designing a Swedish protective passport to

help them to resist both the Germans and

Hungarians. Wallenberg had previously

learned that both the German and Hungarian

bureaucracies had a weakness for symbolism.

So he had his passports attractively printed

in blue and yellow (Sweden’s national colours), displaying Sweden’s coat of arms and

the appropriate authorisations. I have such a

passport, although I have not brought it with

me today. It is a work of art. Wallenberg’s

passports had no validity whatsoever under

international law, but they served their purpose, commanding the respect of those they

were designed to influence. At first, he had

permission to issue only 1,500 passports. But

he managed to persuade the Hungarian authorities to let him issue 1,000 more and, by

one means or another, managed to get the

quota raised again.

Altogether Wallenberg was to save the

lives of 100,000 Hungarian Jewish men,

women and children. At the risk of his own

life, he distributed Swedish passports by the

thousands, even following the death marches

to the Austrian border, physically pulling

people off the trains bound for Nazi concentration camps, confronting at every turn

the Nazis and the death squads. He also successfully protected refugees in scores of

houses that he bought or rented in Budapest,

marking them with the neutral flag of Sweden.

As the Soviet armies encircled Budapest in

late 1944, Wallenberg fearlessly continued his

work. On 13th January 1945, a Russian soldier saw a man standing alone outside a

building with a large Swedish flag flying

above its main entrance. It was Wallenberg.

Speaking in fluent Russian, Wallenberg told

an astonished Soviet sergeant that he was

the Swedish charge’ d’affaires for those parts

of Hungary liberated by the Red Army. He

was invited to visit the Soviet military headquarters at Debrecen, east of Budapest.

On his way out of the capital on 17th January with a Soviet escort, Wallenberg and his

chauffeur, Vilmos Langfelder, stopped at

various ‘‘Swedish Houses,’’ where he bade

farewell to his friends. He cheerfully told one

colleague, Dr. Erno Peto, that he was not

sure whether he would be the guest of the

Soviets or their prisoner, but he thought he
E 926 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — Extensions of Remarks May 2, 1995

would be back within a week. Alas, he never

returned.

According to reliable witnesses,

Wallenberg and his driver were arrested and

taken to Moscow, where they were thrown

into prison. At first, the Soviet authorities

maintained that Wallenberg had been taken

into custody by the Red Army and that he

was under their protection. However, nothing more was heard of him until 1947, when

Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Vyshinsky,

in answer to repeated Swedish inquiries,

stated that he was not in the Soviet Union

and his whereabouts were unknown to them.

That was a blatant lie. Soviet prisoners of

war, chiefly German, who were released in

the early 1950s confirmed that Wallenberg

had indeed been captured and imprisoned in

Moscow, first in the dreaded Lubyanka and

then in Lefortovskyaya prison. The Swedish

Government intensified their inquiries, only

to be told by the Soviet authorities that

they had nothing to add to what they had

said on the subject back in 1947.

Again, during a visit to Moscow in 1956, the

Swedish Prime Minister raised the matter

with the Soviet leadership. He produced irrefutable evidence that Wallenberg had been

imprisoned by the Soviets. The Soviet answer to this was not given until the following year—in the form of a note from the Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko to the

Swedish Ambassador in Moscow. In that

note—to which the Soviet Government have

unfailingly referred every time there have

been inquiries from the West—it was stated

that, as a result of a thorough investigation

by the Soviet authorities, it had been discovered that a prisoner named ‘‘Walenberg’’—

with one ‘‘l’’, which is the Lithuanian spelling of the name—had in fact died from a

heart attack in 1947 in Lubyanka. It was also

asserted that all the documents pertaining

to his case had disappeared and that there

was only a handwritten report about his

death made by the head of the prison hospital service, one A.L. Smoltsov, who had

since died. It seems that Smoltsov had informed the Minister for State Security,

Abakumov, who himself was later to be executed in the purges of the Security Police,

that Wallenberg was dead. Abakumov, of

course, was a convenient person to blame for

having misled the Soviet Foreign Ministry

in the first place. There was lie after lie, deception after deception.

I must tell noble Lords that the Swedish

Government have never accepted—and as far

as I am aware, no Western government has

accepted—the Soviet line that Wallenberg

died in 1947. Why should I say that? The answer is that there is abundant evidence that

he was alive after that date.

Further evidence did come to light in later

years indicating that Wallenberg was alive

but imprisoned in the Soviet Union. Indeed

the great Russian historian Solzhenitsyn has

testified that he met a Swede fitting

Wallenberg’s description during his own imprisonment.

Is it possible then that Raoul Wallenberg

could still be alive? Well, it is not impossible. If he were alive today, he would be just

two years older than myself. Spartan conditions have on occasions—many a doctor can

testify to this—proved beneficial to a long

life. Incredible though it may sound, during

his research for the BBC’s brilliant ‘‘Man

Alive’’ documentary on Wallenberg, John

Bierman met a Russian Jew, Leonid Berger,

who was allowed to emigrate in 1978 after

spending no fewer that 35 years in Soviet

jails.

It is my duty to draw your Lordships’ attention to rumours being circulated that the

family of Raoul Wallenberg now accepts that

he is no longer alive. There is no truth in

this. Indeed, contact has been made with

United States Congressman Tom Lantos,

who was himself rescued from death by

Wallenberg and is the only survivor of the

Holocaust to be elected to the United States

Congress. The Congressman’s office contacted Nina Lagergren, Wallenberg’s half-sister, and she has categorically denied that

any member of the Wallenberg family concedes that he is dead. I am happy to take

this opportunity of paying a tribute to Congressman Lantos, who has kept Wallenberg’s

name alive both inside and outside the United States Congress and was also responsible

for him being granted honorary American

citizenship.

It is now generally accepted that during

his stay in Hungary, Wallenberg saved 100,000

lives. We should never, never, never, never

forget this. May I humbly suggest that we

should honour this brave man by following

the example already provided by our American friends and allies by making him an

honorary British citizen? In an almost poetic

sense, honorary citizenship is uniquely appropriate to Wallenberg quite simply because he used the privilege of Swedish citizenship to save thousands of innocent lives.

Indeed, conferring citizenship—the instrument Wallenberg exercised with so much

courage, generosity and imagination—accounts not only for the fact that thousands

who were granted Swedish citizenship by

him are still alive today and have children

and grandchildren, but also for the fact that,

following his example, other countries which

were neutrals in the war—Portugal, Spain,

Switzerland, and the Vatican—granted citizenship as a means of saving Jewish lives.

Why then even after all these years should

we in Britain honour Wallenberg’s name in

this way? The answer is that, with no

thought for his own safety, in what has been

called ‘‘the slaughterhouse that was Budapest’’, he accomplished the impossible.

Sometimes alone, sometimes with others, he

thwarted the designs of the most murderous

regime the civilised world has ever seen. He

bribed the unspeakable Nazis; he charmed

them on occasions; he lied to them; he certainly threatened and bullied them; and used

every other means he could devise to save

the lives of the Budapest Jews. He was a

Swedish diplomat. He had some authority.

He even entered the deportation trains himself to pull of innocent human beings who

would otherwise have gone to a cruel death.

He worked incessantly, at great personal

risk with utter disregard for his own safety,

and through the sheer force of his example

inspired hundreds of others to assist him.

At the end, when the Red Army entered

Budapest, and what little remained of Nazi

rule collapsed into anarchy, Wallenberg

worked on tirelessly. He told a Swedish diplomat who urged him to seek cover in the

Swedish Legation:

‘‘For me there is no choice . . . I’d never

be able to go back to Stockholm without

knowing inside myself that I’d done all a

man could do to save as many Jews as possible.’’

So it is that we remember Wallenberg because he has become more than a hero of our

times. He symbolises the central conflict of

our age, the determination to remain

human, caring and free in the face of unspeakable tyranny. What Wallenberg represented in Budapest was nothing less than

the conscience of the civilised world. By abducting and imprisoning him, the Soviet authorities did more than violate the longstanding rules of diplomacy accepted by

civilised nations and their govenrments,

they demonstrated contempt for everything

his dedication and bravery in Budapest had

achieved.

Yet even the Soviet Union of those days

did not succeed in suppressing his achievements. Just as the Nazis could not keep him

from his mission, so the Soviets failed to obliterate his legacy.

All mankind owes a great debt to this man,

not only for the 100,000 lives he saved, but

also for the example he gave us as to how

one man with courage to care, even in history’s darkest hour, can become a beacon of

light and can make a difference.

There are two very good reasons for remembering this courageous man. First, because as the author of Milan Kundera observes, ‘‘The struggle of man against power

is the struggle of memory against forgetting.’’ Secondly, to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, the world may little note nor long remember what we say here, but surely it will

always remember what Raoul Wallenberg did

to salvage the dignity of the human spirit

from what was a hell on earth. It is a great

honour to pay tribute to him this afternoon.

THE PASSAIC SEMI-PRO LEAGUE

fHON. WILLIAM J. MARTINI OF NEW JERSEY

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Tuesday, May 2, 1995

Mr. MARTINI. Mr. Speaker, there is nothing

so truly American as the game of baseball. It,

like Spring itself, returns each year to capture

the imagination of millions as our true national

pastime.

We in the Eighth Congressional District of

New Jersey have indeed been fortunate to

have enjoyed a rich baseball tradition for decades, one that has been carried forth by a

high level of competition that has come to

characterize the Passaic County Semi-Pro

League. On Friday, May 5, 1995, that tradition

will again be celebrated with the tenth annual

salute to Passaic semi-pro baseball at the

Athenia Veterans Hall in Clifton, N.J. Hosted

by the dinner committee of Ted Lublanecki,

Jr., Ben Lublanecki, Jean Lublanecki, and

Mike Ivanish, I am sure this celebration will

be, as usual, a great success fitting of the

honorees’ accomplishments.

This year’s event is made truly special by

the highlighting of the careers of men who

brought honor to themselves, their teams, and

the Passaic Semi-Pro League. The honored

group includes Raymond Tkacz, Donald J.

Patlen, Gasper Pellegrino, and Jack Kelsall.

For the benefit of you and our colleagues, I

would like to note some of the accomplishment of these outstanding gentlemen:

Ray Tkacz is the youngest of the honorees

this year. He started his baseball career with

Wallington High School. After graduation, he

moved onto local semi-pro teams such as the

Wallington Hillsides, the Wallington

Demchaks, and the Garfield Benignos. Not

only was Ray a good team player, but he was

a great coach, and he volunteered his time

helping many teams achieve greatness. Ray

coached in both the Wallington Little League

and Babe Ruth League, American Legion Post

347, and Clifton Junior and Senior High

School. His persistence and dedication led

Passaic County High School and Bergen

County American Legion Championships. On

and off the field, Ray has always demonstrated the qualities of a winner. Already an

inductee of the Bergen County Baseball Hall

of Fame, Ray currently resides in Wallington

where he continues his active interest in the

sport.