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PROPOSED RESOLUTION
HONORING THE LIFE OF TEMA BAUER
WHEREAS, Tema Bauer, one of Illinois' oldest Holocaust survivors, has died at the age of 105. She lost all 38 family members and her right arm to the Nazis but found a new life in Chicago with fellow survivor Morris Bauer, who "told her that she need not worry about the future because he would always take care of her;" and
WHEREAS, Tema grew up in a Jewish family in Lodz. She was the youngest of Hendel and Chil Posalska's nine children. Her father Chil was a cattle dealer. When the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, her siblings moved their parents to a smaller town, thinking it might be safer. Tema stayed behind to close up the family home. She was supposed to follow them to the country but was arrested and ordered into the Jewish ghetto in Lodz. Her relatives were all sent to Chelmno, described by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum as "the first stationary facility where poison gas was used for the mass murder of Jews." None survived; and
WHEREAS, for a time, she worked in the ghetto, first in a kitchen, then at a shoe factory. In 1943, she was sent to the slave labor camp Skarzysko-Kamienna. During the three-day train journey to get there, the packed cars had no room to sit, no water, no food, and no bathroom facilities. From there, she was sent to work in the munition's factory in Leipzig, where she was injured during an explosion. Tema, who was right-handed, lost her right arm. A Jewish doctor helped her survive by amputating it above her elbow without any anesthesia or antibiotics. Two months after she lost her arm, she and other women laborers were ordered on a six-day death march toward the Elbe River. The Allied forces were in the area and as they drew near, the Nazi captors fled; and
WHEREAS, after the war, she returned to Lodz in search of her family. There she saw her future husband Morris, then called by his Yiddish name Moishe. He had survived at least seven camps. German soldiers ...
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