Berkley attends Auschwitz ceremony

Suzanne Struglinski

Friday, Jan. 28, 2005 | 9:52 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Walking through the barracks in Auschwitz, Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., thought that if she had been born a generation earlier, she might have seen the Jewish concentration camp as an inmate instead of as a congresswoman.

"I could put myself in the place of the inmates," said Berkley, who is Jewish.

Berkley, 54, was part of the U.S. delegation at the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland Thursday. Polish officials opened the museum at Auschwitz for the visiting Congress members.

She saw a train depot where Jews exited boxcars in the concentration camp as well as the gas chamber and crematoriums where Nazis killed an estimated 1.5 million Jews.

"The only crime they committed was being Jewish, something they had no control over," Berkley said from her hotel in Poland. "That was the reason they were murdered. They were Jews."

Berkley said walking under the camp's infamous iron sign reading "Arbeit Macht Frei" meaning "Work Liberates" or "Work Makes You Free" made her think about the Nazi's "ultimate lie" because the camp was quite the opposite.

"What sticks with me was that it was a very benign looking place," Berkley said.

She said the beauty of the surrounding area, especially covered in snow, provided a "stunning" contrast to the horror that occurred within the camp's boundaries.

Berkley said the snow and freezing temperatures added to the experience.

"These people were wearing threadbare clothes in these temperatures and there we were with hats, gloves, scarves and boots. It was so cold," Berkley said.

The sounds of train whistle and a train pulling into a station opened the commemoration ceremony, which included several heads of state and holocaust survivors.

"It was a sea of faces," Berkley said. "They (the survivors) are very old now, most were children at the time."

Berkley said the reason the 60th anniversary was getting so much attention is that by the time the 70th comes around, many of the survivors will no longer be here.

"No matter where you were talking, there was somebody next to you telling their story," Berkley said.

Before the ceremony on Thursday morning Berkley and other members of Congress met with Prime Minister Marek Belka and she asked about returning paintings made by Dina Babbitt, mother of Las Vegas resident Michele Babbitt-Kane.

"They are fully aware of it," Berkley said.

She expects to meet with the Polish Ambassador to the United States after they return to the country. She said the face-to-face meeting may help her quest to get Babbitt's painting returned to her.

As a prisoner in Auschwitz, Nazis forced Babbitt to draw other inmates. Decades later, the Polish government found the drawings and traced them back to Babbitt but will not let her keep them. Berkley has been working since 1998 to get them back to Babbitt.