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[Pages S7205-S7206]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
TRIBUTE TO WERNER GELLERT
Mr. UDALL. Mr. President, Werner Gellert survived the
Holocaust and never forgot that terrible injustice. Werner went on to
found a museum in Albuquerque dedicated not only to educating people
about the Holocaust but dedicated to stopping intolerance wherever it
is found.
Werner Gellert was born on June 14, 1926 in Breslau, Germany. During
November 9 and 10, 1938, Nazi paramilitary forces carried out a pogrom
throughout Germany demolishing and ransacking Jewish homes, businesses,
synagogues, schools, and hospitals. At that time, 267 synagogues in
Germany and surrounding areas and 7,000 Jewish businesses were
destroyed and over 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and incarcerated in
concentration camps. That pogrom was called Night of the Broken Glass,
or Kristallnacht, meaning ``Crystal Night,'' because of all the broken
glass scattered throughout the streets from the shattered windows of
Jewish buildings.
After the Night of the Broken Glass, Werner and his adopted parents
fled Germany for Shanghai, one of the only places in the world at that
time that accepted Jews unconditionally. However, the Japanese who were
occupying Shanghai became allied with the Germans, and, on February 18,
1943, they issued a proclamation establishing a restricted area where
``stateless refugees'' must live and work. Werner and his family were
relocated to this restricted area, Hongkew, which became plagued with
disease and starvation. On one of his birthdays, Werner asked only for
a loaf of bread and jar of jam for himself, but he didn't get his wish.
During this period, he suffered through starvation, typhus, yellow
fever, and hepatitis, and he was brutalized by a bully and permanently
lost most of the sight in one of his eyes.
After the end of World War II, Werner remained in Shanghai, working
as a typewriter repairman for the U.S. Army. The Army recognized his
intelligence and linguistic skills--he spoke seven languages--and
recruited him into Army intelligence as a civilian consultant. He
worked undercover for the United States in China, Tibet, and the
Philippines.
The Chinese Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s and early 1970s
drove out Werner and his family, and they fortunately were able to
escape on the last boat out of Shanghai to the United States. They
relocated to Denver, where Werner attended Denver University and met
his future wife, Frances Silverman--known as ``Frankie''--to whom he
was married for 54 years, until her passing in 2007.
After a successful career in the savings and loan business in
California, Werner and Frankie retired to Albuquerque. Werner fervently
believed that education was the most effective weapon against hate and
intolerance. With that guiding principal in mind, in 2001, he and
Frankie founded the Albuquerque Holocaust and Intolerance Museum.
The museum is dedicated to educating the public through its
exhibitions on the horrors and injustices of hate--from the Holocaust,
to the African-American experience here in the United States to
genocide of minority peoples around the world. Its goal is to promote
``upstanders,'' not bystanders: people who speak out and act to support
individuals, groups, or causes attacked or bullied. The museum is home
to the Library of Remembrance, a compilation of more than 4,500 books,
documents, and videos about the injustice of genocide, bullying, and
intolerance.
As long as he was able, well into his eighties, Werner spoke to
school groups at the museum and around the State teaching them about
his experience during the Holocaust and as a refugee in Shanghai.
Werner took his own terrible experience and set about to make a better,
more understanding, more tolerant world for others. While we lost
Werner on November 9, 2019, at age 93,
[[Page S7206]]
his commitment to ending genocide, intolerance, and bullying will live
on through the Albuquerque Holocaust and Intolerance Museum.
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