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1
HOUSE RESOLUTION

 
2    WHEREAS, The members of the Illinois House of
3Representatives are pleased to congratulate Tema Posalska
4Bauer on the occasion of her 100th birthday on May 5, 2016; and
 
5    WHEREAS, Tema Bauer was born on May 5, 1916, the youngest
6of nine children in a very religious Jewish family in Lodz,
7Poland, which at the time, had the second largest Jewish
8population in Poland and the largest Jewish population in
9Europe with 3.3 million; and
 
10    WHEREAS, Tema Bauer persisted in life against great odds,
11becoming one of less than 300,000 Polish Jews to survive the
12Holocaust; and
 
13    WHEREAS, Tema Bauer began her solitary journey when at the
14age 23, she was left alone, supposedly temporarily, to close up
15the house in Lodz when her parents and older sister left after
16the Nazi invasion of Poland; the Nazis relocated her to a
17Jewish ghetto and she never saw her parents or any of her
18brothers or sisters again; she worked in the ghetto kitchen for
19children until 1942 when all children were deported to
20concentration camps; she was then deported to a slave labor
21camp in Skarzysko-Kamienna, a journey which took three days in
22a standing room-only train car with no food, water, or bathroom

 

 

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1facilities; and
 
2    WHEREAS, In August of 1944, as the Russians approached,
3Tema Bauer was sent to work in an ammunition factory in
4Leipzig, Germany; during an Allied bombing of the camp in
5February, her arm was severed at the elbow and, even without
6antibiotics, she had the tenacity to stay alive and to survive
7a six-day death march two months later; and
 
8    WHEREAS, After liberation, Tema Bauer returned to Lodz to
9find out that her parents, eight brothers and sisters and their
10spouses, and her eighteen nieces and nephews had all been
11murdered by the Nazis, most of them gassed to death; and
 
12    WHEREAS, Tema Bauer fell in love with Morris Bauer, whom
13she had known from her stay in the ghetto and, who upon seeing
14the loss of her arm, told her that he would always take care of
15her, which he did from when they married on October 1, 1945
16until he died shortly before their 50th wedding anniversary;
17and
 
18    WHEREAS, Tema and Morris Bauer immigrated to Chicago in
191949, where they raised two sons and enjoyed being grandparents
20to three grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren; today,
21she resides in and closely follow the current events and
22politics of her adopted city; and
 

 

 

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1    WHEREAS, Tema Bauer continues to show her amazing memory
2and her strong will in everything she does; her life has been
3and remains a blessing and inspiration to her family and to all
4who know her; therefore, be it
 
5    RESOLVED, BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE
6NINETY-NINTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that we
7congratulate Tema Posalska Bauer on her 100 birthday and we
8wish her many happy and healthy years to come; and be it
9further
 
10    RESOLVED, That a suitable copy of this resolution be
11presented to Tema Bauer as an expression of our esteem and
12respect.