|
|
|
|
SR0431 |
|
LRB093 20736 HSS 46626 r |
|
|
| 1 |
| SENATE RESOLUTION
|
| 2 |
| WHEREAS, The members of the Senate of the State of Illinois |
| 3 |
| learned with regret of the death of Elaine "Leah" Welbel of |
| 4 |
| Skokie on Friday, January 2, 2004; and
|
| 5 |
| WHEREAS, Elaine Mortkovitch was born in Vranoy, |
| 6 |
| Czechoslovakia; her father was a construction worker and |
| 7 |
| preceded her in death when she was eight; her mother was left |
| 8 |
| with eight children to raise; and
|
| 9 |
| WHEREAS, In 1942, Mrs. Welbel and the other Jewish girls in |
| 10 |
| her town were sent by train to Auschwitz under the guise of |
| 11 |
| being sent to work in a factory; she was given the identifying |
| 12 |
| tattoo "4701" on her upper left forearm, a mark that years |
| 13 |
| later she refused to have removed; and
|
| 14 |
| WHEREAS, Mrs. Welbel endured an unusually long internment |
| 15 |
| at Auschwitz, surviving for 33 months; when Auschwitz was |
| 16 |
| liberated in 1945, she was sent to a displaced persons camp in |
| 17 |
| Italy, where she met her future husband, Eliezer Welbel, who |
| 18 |
| had survived 27 months in Auschwitz; they married in 1946 and |
| 19 |
| the next year secretly moved to Palestine, where Mrs. Welbel's |
| 20 |
| three oldest siblings had moved before the war; and
|
| 21 |
| WHEREAS, Mr. and Mrs. Welbel emigrated to the United States |
| 22 |
| after living eight years in Israel; they moved to Chicago in |
| 23 |
| 1959, where they opened a coin laundry at 3352 North Marshfield |
| 24 |
| Street; they retired in 1980; and
|
| 25 |
| WHEREAS, Mrs. Welbel didn't speak publicly about her time |
| 26 |
| in Auschwitz until 1993, after she read a story that tried to |
| 27 |
| discount the history of the Holocaust; she was a sought-after |
| 28 |
| public speaker with a tremendous connection with the students |
| 29 |
| that she spoke to; she worked hard to make sure that the world |
| 30 |
| will never forget the tragedy of the Holocaust; and
|