40th Anniversary of Action Reconciliation Service for Peace
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In the evening hours on Sunday, March 2, 2008, many young and enthusiastic voices could be heart from the residence of the Consul General Dr. Heimsoeth in New York. The Consul General hosted a reception for German volunteers of the “Aktion Sühnezeichen Friedensdienste”, or in English Action Reconciliation Service for Peace (ARSP), and the American partner organisations of ARSP. Since September 2007, these young volunteers have worked in different social institutions and organisations among others in Jewish homes for the elderly, in Jewish Community Centres and in shelters for the homeless and for battered women. It is their mission to spread the belief in reconciliation and peace, and to assure that a human catastrophe like under the Nazi regime will happen never again.
“Aktion Sühnezeichen Friedensdienste” was founded in 1958 by Lothar Kreyssig, and celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. The United States of America is one of several countries, like Poland, Russia, or Israel, where ARSP sends young Germans to fulfill a reconciliation service for one year.
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The range of service is broad: social support for elderly people or for people with disabilities, work with socially disadvantaged persons, and historical and political education. Some volunteers said that the beginning was not easy. One young German, who is working in an institution for people with depressions in Philadelphia, told that it took him time to get to know the residents and to deal with their behaviour. Another girl had problems to get to all the homes of the elderly people, who lived in different corners of the big city of New York. However, all volunteers agreed that the exchange with Jewish people, not rarely Holocaust survivors is enriching. Primary reservations were overcome very quickly.
During a two day weekend retreat in New York the German volunteers also met with young Jewish Americans, mainly from ACCESS, the American Jewish Committee`s new generation program They discussed the holocaust but also current political questions and visited among others the Museum of Jewish Heritage.
