An Unassuming Couple’s Final Act of Generosity

Werner Lange had just $20 in his pockets when he fled Nazi Germany. By the time he died last April, he and his late wife, Ellen, were millionaires.

Lange lost both parents in the concentration camps. His wife was a Holocaust survivor. In Los Angeles, together, they built a new life. But they never forgot their history or what it felt like to have nothing.

In death, they left one Jewish organization with an enormous gift.

The Langes had told the Jewish Community Foundation to expect money when they died. But the $13-million legacy was far beyond anyone’s expectation.

“It was much larger than they had represented it. And yet I wasn’t surprised, because they were so understated and so unassuming in what they did,” said Marvin Schotland, president of the foundation.

Ellen and Werner met in New York; both had just left Germany. They fell in love and married, in the end sharing more than 50 years together.

In 1943, Werner was drafted into the U.S. Army. While he was stationed near San Francisco, the couple were enchanted by the California sunshine and decided to move out west. In 1945, they landed in Los Angeles.

Not long after they had moved, they were offered a deal on a garage full of optical instruments -- lenses, telescopes and binoculars.

They knew almost nothing about the optics industry, but the price was right: $100. As it turned out, so was the timing -- postwar Japan was eager to trade, and the Langes soon built a successful import and export business they called Colonial Optical Co.

As they earned, they gave generously, and usually anonymously, to Jewish programs. People who knew the Langes said they were active in the community, yet they “did almost nothing that brought attention to themselves,” Schotland recalled.

Rabbi Eli Herscher of Stephen S. Wise Temple also described the couple as unassuming and proper. The Langes had attended services at the synagogue for almost 30 years. Ellen wore cheerful dresses, and Werner always wore a dark suit with a colorful tie and glasses with thick black frames.

Although Werner walked a little more slowly as he aged and held a cane, he still stood up straight. People who knew him in his later years would say he always had a certain dignity.

“You knew this was someone who had gone through a lot and survived it,” Herscher said. “He went on to create a life for himself despite having lost his parents in the Holocaust and not having an easy life.”

It was just before Ellen’s unexpected death in 1994 that the couple decided to leave their estate to the foundation. They liked the idea of supporting a community that had been such an important force in their lives.

Helping young people know that history was important too. Through their temple, the Langes helped send several high school students to Israel for nine weeks.

One year, Werner invited scholarship recipient Jake Sherkow to dinner a few weeks after his trip. In this instance, Werner’s curiosity and desire to see Israel through the eyes of a young person overcame his typical reluctance to identify himself as a sponsor.

Werner quizzed Sherkow about his experience -- what he saw, what he felt and what he came away with in the end.

“He didn’t just want to say, ‘I hope you had fun.’ He actually wanted to know what was going on,” recalled Sherkow, now 21.

The Langes’ gift will support programs within Jewish communities in Los Angeles and Israel.

The Jewish Community Foundation has created an endowment fund, named in honor of Ellen and Werner, that will generate about $500,000 annually to support existing charitable initiatives, as well as seed new philanthropic projects. One third of the foundation’s projects serve needs in the Greater Los Angeles community.

In the past, the foundation has provided grants to places such as the Puente Learning Center in Boyle Heights, which sponsors family literacy programs, and Our House in South Los Angeles, which encourages wayward youths to return to school and the work force.

The foundation also provided seed money to expand a small traveling museum into Wilshire Boulevard’s Zimmer Children’s Museum, whose interactive exhibits offer lessons about helping neighbors and thinking about other people’s feelings.

As one of the custodians for the Langes’ bequest, Schotland said he felt a tremendous responsibility to use their gift in ways that reflect their values.

When Werner died last year, he was 90. Before his death, he wrote a letter to a rabbi in preparation for his own eulogy. Werner reflected on his life and the things that mattered most to him.

Although he considered himself a devout Jew, to Werner, choosing to wear a hat or spending more or fewer hours in temple mattered less than the choices a person made day to day.

“In my religion, God just gave men the power to decide good from bad, right from wrong,” he wrote.

“Each man has to make that choice for himself and then live accordingly. I have tried to make that choice as best I can.”