The following article appeared in the Albuquerque Journal on January 28, 2005
Friday, January 28, 2005
Memory of Holocaust Lives On
By Jim Belshaw
Of the Journal
An afternoon in Amsterdam more than 20 years ago left a small bouquet of roses lodged in a corner of my mind, one of those nooks and crannies memory creates where small things reside forever, clear and sharp as the day they were first recorded.
From time to time, something contemporary draws me back to the roses. This time it's the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
In Amsterdam one day, I climbed into a tourist boat and cruised along a canal. The tour guide pointed out this and that point of interest and then said, "We are now passing 263 Prinsengracht, the Anne Frank house."
I went to the house that afternoon. I walked through the opening hidden by the bookcase and went up the stairs to the second floor of the annex, where the family hid from the Nazis.
There is a landing about halfway up the narrow staircase. On the day I climbed those stairs, there was a pedestal with a small, bronze bust of Anne Frank.
Someone had left a bouquet of roses on it. The bouquet has stayed with me ever since.
I thought about it Thursday morning when I went into the New Mexico Holocaust & Intolerance Museum at 415 Central NW, next door to the KiMo.
I mentioned the bouquet when I spoke with Werner Gellert, the museum's founder (along with his wife, Frances) and former president.
When I last spoke to him, he said of the museum: "It's not an easy place to be sometimes. It can be unsettling. It can put you in a bad mood. Sometimes I have to get away from it myself because it reminds me of too much. We are talking about man's inhumanity to man. The ramifications are multiple. You have to have a certain sense for a person to say I will make a difference in trying to diminish hate and intolerance and this is just one avenue of doing this."
I wanted to look at the awful photos, the inconceivable images, juxtapose them against a bouquet of roses in Holland, try to make comprehensible that which is often not.
Werner Gellert is a survivor of the Holocaust. Still recuperating from surgery following a car accident and facing even more surgery, he's not as active as he'd like.
He said the museum was doing well and with cooperation from the city (and the state, he hopes) the museum is looking to move to larger quarters.
I called him at home to ask about history and how it might be kept alive.
Last summer, he still traveled the state to speak to teachers and students. He said some communities made it clear he needn't call anymore. They wouldn't be needing his presence.
Others welcomed him. One delighted him.
"In Grants, I had a marvelous experience," he said. "When the program ended, a Native American mother and daughter presented me with a traveling exhibit on the Holocaust that they had put together for me. I have used it several times to great effect in my presentations. I was flabbergasted when they gave it to me."
Anne Frank's roses seem to bring perspective, as do the small rooms in which her family lived and even the street sounds from just the other side of annex walls. They make the humanity of it easier to grasp.
"Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart," she famously wrote.
Werner Gellert believes the story of the Holocaust will not fade into a historical footnote, lost to generations that will follow his.
"I don't know how long it will be told, but it will be told," he said. "Once all of the survivors have passed away, a detractor will say, 'Show me a survivor.' Hopefully, the second and third generation, like my daughter, will continue to tell the story. I believe they will."