HR1194 99TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY

HR1194 LRB099 21542 MST 48030 r

HOUSE RESOLUTION

WHEREAS, The members of the Illinois House of Representatives are pleased to congratulate Tema Posalska Bauer on the occasion of her 100th birthday on May 5, 2016; and

WHEREAS, Tema Bauer was born on May 5, 1916, the youngest of nine children in a very religious Jewish family in Lodz, Poland, which at the time, had the second largest Jewish population in Poland and the largest Jewish population in Europe with 3.3 million; and

WHEREAS, Tema Bauer persisted in life against great odds, becoming one of less than 300,000 Polish Jews to survive the Holocaust; and

WHEREAS, Tema Bauer began her solitary journey when at the age 23, she was left alone, supposedly temporarily, to close up the house in Lodz when her parents and older sister left after the Nazi invasion of Poland; the Nazis relocated her to a Jewish ghetto and she never saw her parents or any of her brothers or sisters again; she worked in the ghetto kitchen for children until 1942 when all children were deported to concentration camps; she was then deported to a slave labor camp in Skarzysko-Kamienna, a journey which took three days in a standing room-only train car with no food, water, or bathroom facilities; and

WHEREAS, In August of 1944, as the Russians approached, Tema Bauer was sent to work in an ammunition factory in Leipzig, Germany; during an Allied bombing of the camp in February, her arm was severed at the elbow and, even without antibiotics, she had the tenacity to stay alive and to survive a six-day death march two months later; and

WHEREAS, After liberation, Tema Bauer returned to Lodz to find out that her parents, eight brothers and sisters and their spouses, and her eighteen nieces and nephews had all been murdered by the Nazis, most of them gassed to death; and

WHEREAS, Tema Bauer fell in love with Morris Bauer, whom she had known from her stay in the ghetto and, who upon seeing the loss of her arm, told her that he would always take care of her, which he did from when they married on October 1, 1945 until he died shortly before their 50th wedding anniversary; and

WHEREAS, Tema and Morris Bauer immigrated to Chicago in 1949, where they raised two sons and enjoyed being grandparents to three grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren; today, she resides in and closely follow the current events and politics of her adopted city; and

WHEREAS, Tema Bauer continues to show her amazing memory and her strong will in everything she does; her life has been and remains a blessing and inspiration to her family and to all who know her; therefore, be it

RESOLVED, BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE NINETY-NINTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that we congratulate Tema Posalska Bauer on her 100 birthday and we wish her many happy and healthy years to come; and be it further

RESOLVED, That a suitable copy of this resolution be presented to Tema Bauer as an expression of our esteem and respect.