Vivien Spitz

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VIVIEN SPITZ was a Fellow of the Academy of Professional Reporters of the National Court Reporters Association and was an Official Reporter of Debates and Chief Reporter in the United States House of Representatives from 1972 to 1982. During this time she reported Presidents Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan on their State of the Union addresses to the nation. She reported, as well, all foreign Heads of State who addressed Congress, including King Juan Carlos of Spain, President Anwar Sadat of Egypt, and Prime Minister Itzhak Rabin of Israel. She reported President Carter's 1978 establishment of the President's Commission on the Holocaust, appointing Elie Wiesel as Chairman. By contract with the United States War Department, Mrs. Spitz reported the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials in Germany from 1946 to 1948, including the Nazi doctors’ case. She recorded verbatim the words that came from the mouths of witnesses and victims who survived the heinous experiments "in the name of scientific medical research" conducted by doctors who had taken the Oath of Hippocrates to heal and cure— doctors become torturers and murderers. Since 1987 she made presentations on The Nazi Doctors Case of the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, to over 37,000 people in the United States, Canada, and Singapore, using graphic slides of captured German film showing experiments the doctors conducted on concentration camp victims without their consent. Her message is about basic human rights and the dignity of life, the difference between good and evil, and indifference to evil. Steven Spielberg's SHOAH Foundation on December 22, 1995, conducted a videotaped interview of her, which is in the U. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Tony Randall, Producer of Judgment at Nuremberg, in April 2001 had her appear on the Broadway stage following a performance to speak and answer questions. In recognition of her presentations to refute claims that the Holocaust never happened, she received the 1994 Human Relations Award presented by the Denver Beth Joseph Congregation, in December 1995 the America-Israel Friendship League Humanitarian Award, in 1996 a Humanitarian Award presented by the Greater Miami Jewish Federation Commerce and Professions Division, and in 2000 the 30,000-member National Court Reporters Association's first Humanitarian Award ever presented in the association’ s 101-year history. Vivien Spitz was a member of the University of Denver Holocaust Awareness Institute's Speakers Bureau and was honored in 2002 as a "Righteous Gentile" at their Remembrance and Hope Ceremony. In 1978 and 1993 she was listed in the World Who's Who of Women at Cambridge, England; in 1981 in Marquis' Who's Who of American Women. She lived a long and productive life and passed away in 2014.