[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 11] [Extensions of Remarks] [Page 14434] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]TRIBUTE TO DR. WALTER MEYERHOF ______ HON. TOM LANTOS of california in the house of representatives Thursday, July 13, 2006 Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to celebrate the life of Dr. Walter Meyerhof, an extraordinary physicist who fled the horrors of Nazi occupied Europe and made his mark in the world as an American citizen. Dr. Meyerhof died in Los Altos, California on Saturday, May 27, 2006 at the age of 84. Walter Meyerhof was born on April 22, 1922, in Kiel, Germany, into a family of German-Jewish intellectuals. Walter's father Otto received a Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1922. The elder Meyerhof sought to protect his family from rising anti-Semitism in Germany which accompanied the growing political power of the Nazi party. In 1936, the family fled Germany and went to England for three years, and then in 1939 they moved to France, which was attacked by Nazi German military forces not long after their arrival. In 1941 when France was under Nazi occupation, the Meyerhof family came into contact with Varian Fry, a United States consular official in France during this turbulent period who played a critical role in saving Jewish intellectuals, scholars, and others from Nazi death camps. Fry was a Harvard-educated academic who was not Jewish, but who recognized his obligation to save Jews who were under the threat of death by viciously anti-Semitic Nazi thugs. Fry successfully helped save the lives of more then 2000 Jews, including some of the 20th Centuries leading intellectuals and artists. Fry saved the lives of artists Marc Chagall and Max Ernst, writer Hannah Arendt, sculptor Jacques Lipchitz, the Otto Meyerhof family, and many others. Mr. Speaker, Walter Meyerhof never forgot the efforts of his rescuer and dedicated himself to honor Varian fry by establishing and directing a foundation in memory of this man who saved his life. Through the efforts of Meyerhof and the foundation he created, Varian Fry was given the Croix du Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor as well as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Eisenhower Liberation Medal. Also, thanks in part to Meyerhof's efforts, Fry became the first American to be honored as one of the ``Righteous among the Nations'' by the state of Israel at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial. Perhaps the Varian Fry foundation's greatest achievement was the production of the film about Fry entitled Assignment: Rescue. The film, which has been distributed to over 35,000 schools, is educating hundreds of thousands of students about the horror of the Holocaust and the extraordinary courage exhibited by Varian Fry and others who fought the Nazis. After arriving in the United States, Walter Meyerhof became a leading professor and educator. After receiving his doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania, he taught briefly at the University of Illinois and then accepted an appointment at Stanford University. He had a distinguished career at Stanford, served as head of Stanford's physics department, and wrote two textbooks which are still in use today. In 1977, Walter Meyerhof was given the Dinkelspiel Award, an honor given each year to the top Stanford professor in the teaching of undergraduate students. Mr. Speaker, I invite my colleagues to join me in paying tribute to the remarkable legacy of Walter Meyerhof, whose scholarship made an important contribution to contemporary physics, whose excellence in teaching helped mold the minds of some of our Nation's brightest students, and whose unswerving commitment to Varian Fry, the man who saved his life during the Holocaust, established a legacy of remembrance that is a beacon to all of us who respect human dignity and human rights. We join Miriam, his wife of 59 years, his two sons, Michael and David, and his grandson, Matthew in mourning the passing of Walter Meyerhof.