E650 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — Extensions of Remarks April 23, 1998 and in some cases sacrificed their lives so TRIBUTE TO JACK TRAMIEL success in view of the immense obstacles that that we may lead free and prosperous lives impeded their path makes their stories all the we now have in the United States. It also HON. TOM LANTOS more remarkable. sends a dangerous signal to America's youth OF CALIFORNIA One other element that is also common to that it is appropriate to disrespect and dis- IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES these five outstanding business leadersÐthey count devotion to one's community and coun- are ``Founders'' of the U.S. Holocaust Memo- Thursday, April 23, 1998 try. This is simply unacceptable. rial Museum here in Washington, D.C. They Mr. Speaker, the Daughters of the American Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, today represent- have shown a strong commitment to remem- Revolution have always fostered and pre- atives of the Congress, the Administration, bering the brutal horrors of the Holocaust, served the very ideals of basic human free- and the Supreme Court gathered in the Great paying honor to its victims, and working to dom and loyalty to family, community, and na- Rotunda of this historic building for the Na- prevent the repetition of this vicious inhuman- tion which our flag symbolizes. I ask all mem- tional Civic Commemoration to remember the ity. bers to join me in thanking and commending victims of the Holocaust. This annual national Mr. Speaker, Jack Tramiel is one of the five the Willard's Mountain Chapter of the NSDAR memorial service pay tribute to the six million Holocaust survivors and leading American en- on behalf of all Americans, especially those in Jews who died through senseless and system- trepreneurs highlighted in this article. Jack our local communities in upstate New York, for atic Nazi terror and brutality. At this somber began as a typewriter repairman and moved their impressive efforts over the years in en- commemoration, we also honored those he- on to establish his own firm, Commodore, suring that patriotism and pride in our nation roic American and other Allied forces who lib- which initially manufactured typewriters and will remain alive and well in America for many erated the Nazi concentration camps over half adding machines. In 1976 he moved into the years to come! a century ago. field of computers and took Commodore to Mr. Speaker, this past week Fortune Maga- $700 million in sales in 1983. As we here in f zine (April 13, 1998) devoted several pages to the Congress mark the annual Days of Re- an article entitled ``Everything in History was membrance in honor of the victims of Nazi ter- HONORING VARIAN ASSOCIATES, Against Them,'' which profiles five survivors of ror, I am inserting the profile of Jack Tramiel INC. Nazi savagery who came to the United States from Fortune Magazine be placed in the penniless and built fortunes here in their RECORD. HON. ANNA G. ESHOO adopted homeland. It is significant, Mr. Speak- JACK TRAMIEL—SILICON VALLEY FOUNDER, OF CALIFORNIA er, that four of these five are residents of my COMMODORE INTL. IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES home state of California. Mr. Jack Tramiel of Only 10 when the Nazis marched into his city of Lodz, Poland, in 1939, Jack Tramiel Thursday, April 23, 1998 the San Francisco Bay Area, was one of the five that Fortune Magazine selected to high- (then named Idek Tramielski) initially had a Ms. ESHOO. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to light in this extraordinary article, and I want to kid’s thrilled reaction to the sheer spectacle honor Varian Associates, Inc. upon their 50th of the scene: weapons glinting in the sun, pay tribute to him today. soldiers goose-stepping, planes overhead. ‘‘It anniversary of incorporation. Jack Tramiel, like the other four singled out was a fantastic thing,’’ he remembers. Varian Associates was formed by brothers by Fortune Magazine, has a unique story, but Reality crashed down after that. Lodz’s Russell and Sigurd Varian, along with a num- there are common threads to these five tales Jews—one-third of the city’s 600,000 people— ber of associates from Stanford University. of personal success. The story of the penni- were ordered out of their homes and into a The company first opened its doors July 1, less immigrant who succeeds in America is a crowded ghetto. For nearly five years Jack 1948, with just six employees and total capital familiar theme in our nation's lore, but these (an only child) and his parents lived there in of $22,000 to conduct general research in the one room, scavenged for food, and worked— stories involve a degree of courage and deter- his father at shoemaking, Jack in a pants field of physical science. Varian was one of mination unmatched in the most inspiring of factory. The faces that the Tramiels saw in the first companies to recognize the signifi- Horatio Alger's stories. the ghetto changed constantly: Jews left, cance and importance of a strong industry-uni- These men were, in the words of author new Jews came in, often from other coun- versity connection, and encouraged the forma- Carol J. Loomis, ``Holocaust survivors in the tries. Later Tramiel learned that the Jewish tion of Stanford Industrial Park, becoming its most rigorous sense,'' they ``actually experi- leader of the ghetto was parceling out its initial resident. Varian has grown from its mod- enced the most awful horrors of the Holo- residents to the Germans, believing that the est beginnings into one of Silicon Valley's community would be left in relative peace as caust, enduring a Nazi death camp or a con- long as he periodically delivered up a contin- greatest success stories, winning over 10,000 centration camp or one of the ghettos that gent of its residents for deportation—and no patents, receiving countless Industrial Re- were essentially holding pens for those doubt extermination. search 100 Awards, and continually producing camps.'' In August 1944 the Tramiels themselves one or more of our nation's 100 most promis- They picked themselves up ``from the very were herded into railroad cars, told they ing new products yearly. cruelest of circumstances, they traveled to were going to Germany to better themselves, Varian has evolved into a world leader in its America and prospered as businessmen. They and instead shipped to Auschwitz. Jack’s most vivid memory of the three-day trip is current line of businessÐhealth care systems, did it, to borrow a phrase from Elie Wiesel, that each person received a whole loaf of analytical instruments, and semiconductor when everything in history was against them.'' bread as a ration—a feast beyond his imagi- manufacturing equipment. The company em- They were teenagers or younger when World nation. At journey’s end, the men were sepa- ploys over 7,000 individuals at over 100 plants War II began. They lost six years of their rated from the women (at which point Jack and offices in nine countries, and generates youth and six years of education. ``they were lost track of his mother) and then them- sales well in excess of one billion dollars an- deprived of liberty and shorn of dignity. All lost selves split into two groups, one permitted nually. Since its inception, Varian has had a relatives, and most lost one or both parents. for the time being to live, the other sent to strong commitment to our community, exem- Auschwitz’s gas chambers. Jack and his fa- Each . . . was forced to live constantly with ther were thumbed into the group that sur- plified by its establishment of our nation's sec- the threat of death and the knowledge that vived. ond Minority Small Business Investment Com- next time he might be `thumbed' not into a line A few weeks later, Jack and his father pany and its leadership role with the Urban of prisoners allowed to live, but into another were ‘‘examined’’ by the notorious Dr. Josef Coalition on fair housing, among others. line headed for the gas chambers.'' Through Mengele and thumbed again into a survivors Varian was recognized by Industry Week Mag- luck and the sheer will to survive, these were line. ‘‘What do you mean—examine?’’ azine as one of the World's 100 Best Man- some of the very fortunate who lived to tell the Tramiel is asked. ‘‘He touched my testicles. He judged whether we were strong enough to aged Companies in 1997. story of that horror. work.’’ Having passed, Tramiel and his fa- Over the last 50 years, Varian has become The second part of their stories is also simi- ther were transported to a spot just outside one of our nation's most successful compa- larÐa variant of the American dream. These Hanover, Germany, and there set to building nies. Varian is a jewel in the crown of the 14th courageous men came to the United States a concentration camp into whose barracks Congressional District of California and Silicon with ``little English and less money.'' Despite they themselves moved. In weather that was Valley. their lack of friends and mentors, they found often bitter cold, they worked in thin, pa- Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to join me the drive to succeed. As Loomis notes, ``many jama-like garments, and they grew increas- ingly emaciated on a deprivation diet: wa- in celebrating the 50th anniversary of Varian's millions who were unencumbered by the tery ‘‘soup’’ and bread in the morning, and a inception and in commending the company for heavy, exhausting baggage of the Holocaust potato, bread, and more ‘‘soup’’ at night. its extraordinary achievements and its con- had the same opportunities and never reached By December 1944 the Tramiels were as- tributions to our nation. out of seize them as these men did.'' Their signed to different work crews and seeing April 23, 1998 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — Extensions of Remarks E651 each other only occasionally. At one of their chines from Italy, but found he could get the Which is what he did in those early years meetings the father told the son that many import exclusivity he wanted only by mov- for computers, leading Commodore to $700 young people in the camp were managing to ing to Canada. It was in Toronto, in 1955, million in sales in fiscal 1983 and $88 million smuggle food to their elders—and why hadn’t that he founded a company he called Com- in profits. At its peak price in those days, Jack done that for his father? Stung, Jack modore, an importer and eventually a manu- the stock that Tramiel had sold in 1962 at a studied for days how to deal with an electric facturer of both typewriters and adding ma- price of $2.50 a share was up to $1,200, and his fence that stood between him and an SS chines. Why Commodore? Because Tramiel 6.5% slice of the company was worth $120 kitchen and finally succeeded in burrowing wanted a name with a military ring and be- million. his thin frame under it to steal food—one po- cause higher ranks, such as General and Ad- But then, in early 1984, just as annual sales tato and some peels. But when he got the miral, were already taken. were climbing above $1 billion, Tramiel food to his father, malnutrition had gripped Commodore went public in 1962 at a Cana- clashed with a Commodore stockholder the older man and grossly swollen his body. dian bargain-basement price of $2.50 a mightier than he, Irving Gould—and when He could not eat. Soon after, he died in the share—a deal that raised funds Tramiel need- the smoke had cleared, Tramiel was out. The camp’s infirmary. Later, Jack learned that ed to pay off big loans he’d gotten from a Ca- nature of their quarrel was never publicly the death was directly caused by an injection nadian financier named C. Powell Morgan, disclosed. Today, however, Tramiel says he of gasoline into his father’s veins. head of Atlantic Acceptance. Deep trouble wanted to ‘‘grow’’ the comapny, and Gould erupted in the mid-1960s when Atlantic, to As the winter stretched into the spring of didn’t. 1945, Jack Tramiel himself grew increasingly which Commodore was almost joined at the Commodore was really Tramiel’s last hur- hip, went bankrupt, amid charges of fraudu- fatalistic. But then a strange end-of-the-war rah. True, he surfaced again quickly in the lent financial statements, dummy compa- tableau unfolded. First, the Germans van- computer industry, agreeing later in 1984 to nies, and propped stock prices. Tramiel was ished from the camp; second, the Red Cross take over—for a pittance—Warner Commu- never charged with illegalities, but an inves- moved in briefly, overfed the prisoners to the nications’ foundering Atari operation. But in tigative commission concluded that he was point that some died, and then left; third, a business changing convulsively as IBM probably not blameless. In any case, the Ca- the Germans returned and then vanished brought out its PC and the clones marched again. On their heels came two American nadian financial establishment ostracized him. Struggling to keep Commodore itself in, Atari was a loser and ultimately a ven- soldiers—‘‘20-foot-tall black men, the first ture into which Tramiel was unwilling to blacks I’d ever seen,’’ says Tramiel—who out of bankruptcy, he was forced in 1966 to give partial control of the company to Cana- sink big money. Eventually he folded Atari loomed in a barracks door, peered at the into a Silicon Valley disk-drive manufac- prisoners hiding beneath the straw of their dian investor Irving Gould. Commodore’s line then was still type- turer, KTS, in which he has a major interest bunks, said something in English that one writers and adding machines, but the elec- but plays no operational role. Jew gleaned as ‘‘More Americans will be tronics revolution was under way and setting Today Tramiel is basically retired and coming,’’ and left. Next a tank rolled up. In up shop in Silicon Valley. Tramiel himself managing his money. From four residences, it stood a Jewish chaplain in dress uniform, moved there in the late 1960s and soon, dis- he’s cut down to one, a palatial house atop a who declared in Yiddish: ‘‘You are free,’’ and playing a speed-to-market talent that has foothill in Monte Sereno, Calif. In its garage told the tank to move on. These were troops characterized his whole life, had Commodore are two Rolls-Royces, a type of luxury to of the advancing American Army, the month pumping out electronic calculators. In time, which Tramiel has long been addicted. was April 1945, and Tramiel was 16. one product, a hand-held calculator, grew so Naturally, charity fundraisers took Tramiel, today 69 and a fireplug in build, popular that it was self-destructive: The Tramiel up. When those for the Holocaust stayed in Europe for more than two years company that supplied Commodore with Memorial Museum appeared, he at first after his liberation, and many of his recol- semiconductor chips, Texas Instruments, de- thought of it as just one more philanthropic lections of those days concern food: how he cided to produce calculators itself—selling cause to be supported. But his wife, Helen, tricked his way into a sanitarium to a rich, them at prices that Commodore couldn’t 69, who spent her concentration camp days and shamefully fattening, diet; how he match. at Bergen-Belsen, is intensely aware that gorged happily while working in an Amer- With Commodore again reeling, Tramiel both she and her husband survived what mil- ican Army kitchen; how he did other odd vowed never again to be at the mercy of a lions of other Jews did not. ‘‘No,’’ she said jobs for ‘‘money or food.’’ But he also vital supplier. In 1976 he made a momentous adamantly, ‘‘for this one we have to go all learned during this time that his mother was acquisition: MOS Technology, a Pennsyl- out.’’ alive and back again in Lodz. He saw her vania chip manufacturer that also turned f there but then left, resolved by that time to out to be extravagantly nurturing about 200 marry a concentration-camp survivor he’d different R&D projects. Tramiel, a slash-and- INTRODUCTION OF POSTAL SERV- met, Helen Goldgrub, and go with her to the burn, early-day Al Dunlap in management ICE SAFETY AND HEALTH PRO- U.S. style, killed most of the projects imme- The two wed in Germany in July 1947. They diately. But he listened hard when an engi- MOTION ACT got to the U.S. separately, though—he first, neer named Chuck Peddle told him the com- in November of that year. His confidence, pany had a chip that was effectively a micro- HON. JAMES C. GREENWOOD strengthened by what he’d survived, bor- computer. And small computers, said Peddle, OF PENNSYLVANIA dered on hubris: ‘‘I figured I could handle ‘‘are going to be the future of the world.’’ just about anything,’’ he says. He started out Willing to take a limited gamble, Tramiel IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES living at a Jewish agency, HIAS, in New told Peddle that he and Tramiel’s second Thursday, April 23, 1998 York City; got a job as a handyman at a son, Leonard, then getting a Columbia Uni- Fifth Avenue lamp store; learned English versity astrophysics degree, had six months Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, today I from American movies; and at their end to come up with a computer Commodore am introducing legislation to treat the U.S. pigged out on chocolate instead of eating could display at an upcoming Comdex elec- Postal Service the same as any private em- regular dinners. tronics show. They made the deadline. ‘‘And ployer under the Occupational Safety and Then, in early 1948, he did the improbable, everyone loved the product,’’ says Tramiel, Health Act. joining the U.S. Army. By the time he left it relishingly rolling out its name, PET, for The fact that the Postal Service has not four years later, he’d been reunited with his Personal Electronic Transactor. Unfortu- been covered by the Occupational Safety and wife and fathered a son (the first of three). nately, this was potentially an expensive The Army had also pointed him to a career pet, carrying a lot of risk—and demanding, Health Act in the same way as private employ- by putting him in charge of repairing office says Tramiel, ‘‘a lot of money I still did not ersÐincluding private employers with whom equipment in the New York City area. have.’’ So he determined to gauge demand by the Postal Service directly competes for busi- When Tramiel checked back into civilian running newspaper ads that offered six-week nessÐis apparently due to the fact that both life, he entered a long period of close encoun- delivery on a computer priced at $599, a se- the Occupational Safety and Health Act and ters with machines that typed words and ma- ductive figure on which Tramiel thought he the Postal Reorganization Act were being con- nipulated numbers. He first worked, at $50 a could still make a profit. The ads appeared, sidered at the same time by Congress, in week, for a struggling typewriter-repair and a hugely encouraging $3 million in shop. Using his Army connections, Tramiel checks came back. 1970. In any event, the Postal Service, al- got the owner a contract to service several Commodore got to the market with its though it is now ``an independent establish- thousand machines. ‘‘The guy flipped,’’ says computer in 1977, in the same year that ment of the Executive Branch of the Govern- Tramiel, but did not give his enterprising Apple and Tandy put their micros on sale. In ment of the United States'' is considered a employee a raise. ‘‘I have no intention of the next few years, Tramiel drove those com- ``federal agency'' for purposes of the Occupa- working for people who have no brains,’’ said petitors and others wild by combatively tional Safety and Health Act. Tramiel to the owner, and quit. pushing prices down and down, to levels like As a ``federal agency,'' under Section 19 of Tramiel then bought a typewriter shop in $200. He also became famous for rough treat- the Bronx. He did repair work for Fordham ment of suppliers, customers, and execu- the Occupational Safety and Health Act, and University and, when he once got a chance to tives—and about it all was fiercely unrepent- Executive Order 12196, the Postal Service is buy scads of used typewriters, rebuilt and re- ant. ‘‘Business is war,’’ he said. ‘‘I don’t be- supposed to comply with OSHA standards, but sold them. He next prepared to import ma- lieve in compromising. I believe in winning.’’ it is not subject to OSHA enforcement as are