[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 206 (Thursday, December 19, 2019)]
[Senate]
[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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