Ray J. Madden

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Ray J. Madden

Ray John Madden (born February 25, 1892 in Waseca , Minnesota , †  September 28, 1987 in Washington, DC ) was an American politician . Between 1943 and 1977 he represented the state of Indiana in the US House of Representatives .

Career

Ray Madden attended his home public schools and the Sacred Heart Academy . After a subsequent law degree at Creighton University in Omaha ( Nebraska ) and his license to practice law in 1913, he began to work in Omaha in this profession. In 1916 he was a city judge there. During World War I Madden served in the US Navy . After the war he practiced as a lawyer in Gary . From 1935 to 1938 he was account manager in this city; from 1938 to 1942 he served as a treasurer in Lake County .

Madden was a member of the Democratic Party . Since 1936 he participated in all regional Democratic party conventions in Indiana; between 1940 and 1968 he was also a delegate to all Democratic National Conventions . In the 1942 congressional elections , Madden was elected to the US House of Representatives in Washington in the first constituency of Indiana, where he succeeded William T. Schulte on January 3, 1943 . After 16 re-elections, he was able to complete a total of 17 legislative terms in Congress by January 3, 1977 . Between 1963 and 1965 he represented the eighth district for one legislative period before returning to the first.

During Madden's time as a congressman, he became known for his initiative to have a House Commission investigate the Katyn massacre . The report of the Madden Commission named after him , which under his chairmanship also traveled to London , Frankfurt am Main and Naples to question witnesses , was presented in 1952. As part of the counter-offensive of the communist leadership of the People's Republic of Poland against the Madden Commission, he was attacked by the Warsaw press, which was subject to party control, as a “Hitler sympathizer” and “defender of Goebbel's propaganda”.

Between 1965 and 1969, Madden was co-chair of the Joint Committee on Organization of Congress . From 1973 to 1977 he was chairman of the rules of procedure committee .

In 1976, the then 84-year-old Ray Madden was no longer nominated for re-election by his party and retired from politics on January 3, 1977 after leaving the House of Representatives. However, he remained in the federal capital Washington, where he died on September 28, 1987 at the age of 95. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery , Virginia .

Individual evidence

  1. Claudia Weber : War of the perpetrators. The Katyn mass shootings . Hamburg 2015, pp. 365–366, 376–377.
  2. The Katyn Forest Massacre. US Government Printing Office. Washington 1952.
  3. Tomasz Wolsza: "To co wiedziałem przekracza swją grozą najśmielsze fantazje". Wojenne i powojenne losy Polaków wizytujących Katyń w 1943 roku. Warsaw 2015, p. 331.

Web links