[Pages S6908-S6910]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

TRIBUTE TO HENRY JARECKI

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, Henry and Gloria Jarecki are two of my
longest and best friends. I speak, of course, both because of our
personal friendship, but also of their efforts with the important
Scholar Rescue Fund, a program designed to provide fellowships for
scholars whose are persecuted or threatened at home for the important
work they do. This commitment is especially poignant, when considering
that, as a child, Henry fled the Holocaust in Germany, ultimately
settling in the United States.
Both Henry and Gloria have worked to bring about recognition and
understanding of people of different races, religions, and cultures. To
me, Henry has been more than just a friend. He has been a mentor and a
confidant. Some of the happiest times for Marcelle and me have been
with Henry and Gloria.
Dr. Henry Jarecki recently received the Order of Merit, Officer's
Cross, in Heidelberg, Germany. The Order of Merit is the only federal
decoration in the Federal Republic of Germany. This high honor is
befitting not only of Henry's history, but of his long dedication to
promoting the simple but sometimes difficult principles of freedom and
liberty.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of Dr. Henry
Jarecki's moving remarks upon receiving this prestigious honor be
printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:

Dr. Henry Jarecki: Acceptance of Order of Merit, Officer's Cross--
November 17, 2016

OPENING THANKS

It is a great honor to receive this award from the
President of the Federal Republic of Germany, Joachim Gauck,
a leader honored by Germany for transforming his experiences
with totalitarianism into support for freedom, human rights,
and democracy. Thank you, Minister Bauer and Mayor Wurzner,
for presenting it to me. Thanks also to Rektor Eitel for his
thoughtful welcome. Let me also thank two special individuals
who have played a prominent role in this award: the former
Consul General of Germany to New York, Busso von Alvensleben,
who is here with us tonight, and the current Consul General
of Germany to New York, Brita Wagener.
I am of course thrilled to have so many friends and members
of my family here with me at this special event, including my
sons Andrew, Tom, and Nick and my grandsons Alexander and
Tyler. Most of all, I acknowledge my wife, Gloria. It was on
this very day in 1957 that the lovely Gloria Friedland became
my. wife After 59 years of marriage, I think she deserves her
own award!

[[Page S6909]]

SYMMETRY

This is a very personal moment for me. When I look at my
life, I see that it has been defined by one thing: the desire
to make unruly things symmetrical, to smooth over the bumps
of life, and to identify and align the parts that do not fit.
This is how I made sense of the events that first took me
away from Germany and have now brought me back, accepting an
award in this most distinguished Alte Aula.
Over 75 years ago, I had to flee in fear from this very
country that is now presenting me with this great honor. The
Hitler regime had come to power less than three months before
my birth, gaining strength by finding scapegoats for the
troubles of the German people that were caused by World War I
and the peace treaty, and from the ensuing inflation and
depression. The Nazis alleged that the country's defeat,
hunger, and chaos were due to traitors and to Jews, whom they
called foreigners despite the fact that they had been in
Germany ever since the Romans drove them here in the 70th
year of the Christian Era. My family, which could trace
itself back for generations, was unwilling to believe that
this land of Goethe and Heine could be governed by a nativist
group of criminals: ``Surely they can't mean us,'' my family
said. But they did.
We didn't believe it until we had all been arrested and
stripped of almost everything we owned. Only then did we
flee, first to England and then to America. America welcomed
us, as it usually does welcome refugees, despite the
occasional internal bigot. This rescue and welcome gave us
the opportunity to transform ourselves into hard-working
patriots.
The Nazis had forced us out of Germany but they couldn't
force the German out of us. We held on to our roots. We held
on to some of the language, especially after we heard our
parents lapse into German when telling each other secrets.
``Aber nicht vor den Kindem.'' Our father taught us skat and
told us about Heidelberg, where he had studied before going
to the front in the First World War.
Unlike some of our fellow refugees, we made sense of what
had happened not by rejecting Germany but by re-engaging with
it as soon as we possibly could. In fact, my brother and I
returned to Heidelberg in 1951 to pursue the same medical
studies as our father had.
Doing so was our way of re-assuming our character as
Germans. Philipp Schwartz, the Frankfurt professor of
pathology who fled to Zurich in 1933 and rescued over 1,000
dismissed German scholars, years later said of his work: ``We
committed ourselves to represent the true spirit of the
German nation to the world.''
This re-engagement, which brought my past and present into
alignment, is the reason for my award today. In seeking to
make the different parts of my life fit, I have engaged
actively with both the city of Heidelberg and the city of New
York. I have looked for ways to further strengthen the U.S.-
Germany relationship. And I have felt perfectly at home in
both places, perhaps, as my wife and closest friends would
say, just a bit more exuberantly in Germany, like the
eighteen-year-old I was when I found myself in my lost
homeland.

REFUGEES

My U.S.-German outlook, as well as my own personal
experience as both a refugee and an academic, give me a
unique perspective on what is happening in Germany today and
have brought me to a new initiative, about which I will tell
you in a few minutes.
Germany finds itself at the center of a new refugee crisis,
and this time the country is courageously doing what it can
to help. There were 60 million people displaced after the
Second World War, 21/2% of the world's then-prevailing
population. Today, there are 65 million refugees among the
world's 7 billion people, less than 1%. The proportion makes
today's situation sound better than it is, however. After
World War II, most refugees were resettled within a few
years. Today, a refugee's average stay in a camp is over 15
years.
During both times, refugees (we called ourselves ``refs'')
remained controversial. Some people think of them only as
weak, poor, and burdensome. Others think they are smart
opportunists or terrorists just waiting for the chance to
become violent or, at the very least, take our jobs.
We need an alternative narrative. I propose this: Germany's
new incoming refugees are smart, strong, ambitious, and
young. Our support of them now will yield great results for
Germany into the future.
Throughout history, such refugee flows have always been
with us. The world has in fact made the best of them; it has
come to use them like an accelerated form of Darwinian
natural selection. Faced with the turmoil and xenophobia that
is a never-ending part of our flawed psyches and world, only
the strongest and smartest, the most resilient and the
hardest workers, are able to re-establish themselves. The
philosopher Lin-Manuel Miranda, speaking of Alexander
Hamilton, said it well: ``Immigrants get the job done.''
Their youth is part of their strength. Over two-thirds of
them are below the age of 33. Germany's rapidly aging
population makes these migrants just the people Germany needs
for its future. They are, moreover, ambitious, smart, and
anxious to learn.

COMMITMENT TO HEIDELBERG

My own life serves as an example of the accelerated natural
selection premise.
As I mentioned before, Heidelberg readily welcomed me and
my family and gave me an education that made me thrive. We
have done what we could to reciprocate. Soon after he came to
office, I asked the Mayor what I could do to express my
gratitude. He suggested that I help to develop a dilapidated
rail yard into a science campus that would attract talent
from all over the world.
Over the past few years and through the Max Jarecki
Foundation, Tony and I have worked with a dedicated team to
develop a whole new part of the city--the Bahnstadt. I thank
Mayor Wurzner, his chief of staff Nicole Huber, Giles
Hemmings, who manages the Max Jarecki Foundation, Tobias
Wellensiek, who is not only our legal advisor but also the
son of my friend of 60 years Jobst Wellensiek, and city
officials who have helped make our Bahnstadt project a
reality--including Mr. Mevius, Mr. Dietz, and Mrs.
Friedrich--for their help. The Bahrtstadt is one of the
greenest developments in this country, with full access to
new technologies, and within minutes of Heidelberg's
preeminent educational institutions. This project is a
great example of Heidelberg's successful integration of
tradition and innovation, science and business, the past
and the future. As the British writer G.K. Chesterton
said, ``Tradition means not that the living are dead; it
means that the dead come alive.''
I am fortunate to have had an outstanding team facilitating
our efforts. This team has been led by the talented Tony
Detre, who took the ideas proposed by the Mayor and helped to
make them a reality. I simply could not have done this work
without him.
Today, I would like to make several new commitments to the
city and the university and to undertake a new partnership
with the state.
Earlier today, we dedicated a new creativity-oriented
adventure playground in the Emmertsgrund, a part of the city
in which many families of modest means live, many of them
from immigrant and refugee backgrounds.
Just as Mayor Wurzner repeatedly looks for new ways for us
to help our city, Rektor Eitel finds new ways for us to
collaborate in the development of the university. He started
by taking me to see the dilapidated Anatomy building and
asked me to help restore it. He now asks for help in
refurbishing the University's Max Weber House, an important
part of Heidelberg's recent intellectual history. I point out
to my many American guests that this university, my alma
mater, founded in 1386, is the oldest university in Germany.
It is indeed one of the oldest in the world. It, too, owes
its existence to refugees: it was the Great Schism of 1378
that made it possible for Heidelberg, a small city at the
time, to gain its own university. Two popes were elected that
year--one in Avignon by the French, and one in Rome by the
Italians. When Germany supported Rome and not France, German
students and teachers in Paris were thrown out, becoming
(yes, we see this again) academic refugees. This led to the
founding of the university, bringing to full circle its
willingness to take in today's refugees.

SCHOLAR RESCUE

This brings me quite neatly to my final topic of the
evening: a scholar rescue partnership I wish to create with
the state of Baden-Wurttemberg.
My own scholar rescue work started in 2002. Drawing upon my
own background as an academic and a former refugee, I joined
together with several other trustees of New York's Institute
of International Education, or IIE, to form a new entity that
would respond to what seemed like an ever-present need to
rescue persecuted scholars. With IIE's long history of this
work in mind, and with the blessing of IIE's President, Dr.
Allan Goodman, who is here with us tonight, we formed the
Scholar Rescue Fund.
Over the past 14 years, IIE's Scholar Rescue Fund has saved
the lives and work of nearly 700 professors from 56
countries, placing them in over 350 safe haven universities
in more than 40 countries around the world, including
Germany. It was this work that led us, last year, to partner
with the Philipp Schwartz Initiative, fostered by Foreign
Minister Steinmeier and managed by the Alexander von Humboldt
Foundation with federal resources. I am pleased to see its
Director-General, Dr. Enno Aufderheide, and Director of
Strategy, Dr. Barbara Sheldon, here with us tonight. This
program enables German universities to host threatened
scholars from around the world, thus further emphasizing
Germany's role and status as a safe haven country.
As evidenced by the history of the University of
Heidelberg, this is a very old story. From the burning of the
great library of Alexandria, scholars have fled persecution
to safe havens, bringing their knowledge and skills with them
and greatly enriching academic life in their new homes. The
sack of Constantinople in the year 1204 caused its best
scholars to flee from Turkey to Europe, and is said to have
produced the European Renaissance. More recently, the U.S.
benefitted greatly from scientists and scholars expelled by
the Nazis, as did the Turkish higher education system, which
was rebuilt in the 1930s and 1940s by over 1,000 German
scholars. As collaborators of the Scholar Rescue Fund for the
past 10 years, Jordan's Prince Talal and Princess Ghida
valiantly made their country into a safe haven for Iraqi
scholars, welcoming hundreds of talented academics into their
universities. And now Germany has stepped up to help.

[[Page S6910]]

The need today is very great. Scholars around the world are
facing fresh repression and conflict. More scholars are
fleeing Iraq and Syria, a new crisis looms in Turkey, and
increasing threats to academics have emerged in countries as
diverse as Bangladesh and Ethiopia.
Today, I would like to tell you about developing a new
partnership. Over the past few weeks, several colleagues and
I have met with Theresia Bauer, Minister of Science, Research
and Art for the state of Baden-Wurttemberg, of which
Heidelberg is a part. We have discussed an innovative idea to
add to Germany's current scholar rescue efforts by joining
together SRF, private funds, and the state of Baden-
Wurttemberg. We are happy to have the Baden-Wurttemberg
Stiftung as a partner who, with the Ministry, will support a
new group of persecuted academics to be placed specifically
in this state. The supervisory board of the Baden-Wurttemberg
Stiftung just decided last week to join the program. I am
happy to welcome the Executive Director, Christoph Dahl,
today.
While the details of such a unique multi-lateral
partnership remain to be confirmed, and we all look forward
to guidance from our friends at the Humboldt Foundation, I
can say a few things. First, this very much follows in the
tradition of Baden-Wurttemberg, under Minister Bauer, showing
leadership on such issues, most recently with a new program
to provide scholarships to refugee students. Second, such a
new program makes best use of SRF's power to find and vet
persecuted academics from any country and every field. Third,
it shows both the power and promise of private philanthropy
to bring different groups together to find creative solutions
to urgent problems. It is just this type of collaborative
thinking that we need in our inter-connected world.
What we see now as a refugee problem may well become an
even greater deluge in the near future as climate change
devastates ever more of our planet, and technology enables
tyrants to maintain power more cruelly.
We live on a tiny ball spinning through a largely empty
space. And if we don't share this small world that we
inhabit, it will be its end. Building walls is futile;
equally bad, they put the people on each side into prisons,
no matter how prettily they are wall-papered.
We in the so-called first world are, with our ferocious
energy consumption, deeply implicated in the changes we see
today, and the greater ones we will see tomorrow. More and
more people will come to us, dragging their young children
across the seas and the mountains to come to a place they
don't know a continent away. We should feel deeply honored,
but we must live up to it. If we don't, the liberties they
hope we have will be lost to us all.
``Giess Wasser zur Suppe und heiss alle willkommen'' (``Add
water to the soup and make everyone welcome'') is an old
German folk saying. Those ancestors well understood that a
meal cannot be enjoyed, a peace not maintained, and one's own
not protected without sharing and compromise. It is a bit of
German folk wisdom that has survived all imperializing
regimes and their detriments.
Once again, I thank you for the great honor of this award
and commit myself, in the spirit of true and authentic
partnership, to do this critical and urgent work together.

____________________