On the recordApril 16, 2018
I thank Congressman Joe Wilson. He has been a terrific mentor for me, and I am grateful for his allowing me to recognize this really important experience. As we are remembering, there is a really important person in my life who has inspired me in many of the things that I do, and her name was Helen Sperling. She was born in 1920. She is a Holocaust survivor. She survived a Nazi death camp. She was actually liberated on April 18, 1945--just a couple of days away from that anniversary date. She had to be hospitalized in Germany for 3 years before she was finally able to immigrate to the United States with, eventually, her husband, who was also a Nazi survivor. But Helen was a special person, and she was someone whom I got to know. As Congressman Gohmert just mentioned, as a student in New Hartford, New York, she was a resident of our town, and a very tiny woman, wonderfully positive and very excitable and really just a warm person. I was a seventh grade student, and she came and spoke to our class about the Holocaust and explained to us the horrors of what happened to her and her family in Nazi Germany, and it was just so impactful. Helen basically spent her life telling this story. As Congressman Gohmert alluded to a moment ago, this wonderful person--one day, my son, 30 years later, came back from seventh grade and said: Mom, I met this incredible woman.…
