Elias leads an elderly Israeli woman in a slow waltz. The 21-year-old German is a volunteer with the German organization Action Reconciliation Service for Peace (ARSP). Elias is organizing a dance course for Holocaust survivors, who are twisting together to the sound of old hits. After a few steps, the woman tells Elias that she has a number on her arm, tattooed in a German concentration camp.

"The old people don't have any problems with Germany, probably because generations of ARSP-volunteers had left a good impression," says Elias.

David, another volunteer like Elias, isn't dancing but is teaching young Palestinians at the Freedom Theater in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank. The 28-year-old German is proud to see how his students progress and is well received at the camp.

But when he says he comes from Germany, some Palestinians say, "Wow, Germany, Hitler." Others expect him to lift the curfew or keep their homes from being searched - which are part of everyday life in occupied Palestine. The Israeli soldiers ask David why he came to the West Bank and advise him to go to Iraq instead.

Working through the past

Elias and David are two of the 40 German volunteers and former volunteers in Israel and the West Bank interviewed by director Torge Kübler and actors Natanael Lienhard and Matthias Rott for the German-Israeli play "The Peace Syndrome." The production, largely based on their accounts, wraps up a series of performances in Heidelberg on May 20 before premiering in Tel Aviv in September.

Why did these Germans come to Israel? "I wanted to know how it is to live here because the TV-images were not enough," explains one ARSP volunteer in the play. Another felt "excited by the danger," while a third had a background in political science and specialized in projects for promoting peace. And a fourth says his grandmother has hidden Jews during the war, while his grandfather was a Nazi.

Director Kübler, 38, said some of the participants are the grandchildren of Nazi perpetrators, but that "most German volunteers nowadays belong to the third and fourth generation and just want an exciting year abroad, vocational training or simply to contribute to society."

He added that, whatever their reasons for coming, the ARSP-volunteers are particularly keen on working through the Nazi past. "Besides, they are instructed to study their own family history in order to be prepared for debates in Israel," said Kübler.

Have fun, too

Some 250 Germans are currently volunteering in Israel, and a few dozen are in the West Bank, though exact statistics aren't available. The ARSP alone send 24 volunteers each year, while another 15 come for a three-week traineeship. In addition, the Evangelische Missionswerk, organized by several Protestant churches, sends some 10 volunteers to work with Israeli and Palestinian non-governmental organizations each year.

"Most of them are 18 or 19 and have just completed their school leaving exams," explained 28-year-old actor Natanael Lienhard, who met up with the volunteers for his research. "Only few of them were motivated by their Christian faith and only very few wanted to atone for German guilt. And those who came through the Church also wanted to have fun, and not just do good deeds."

Most volunteers work in social projects - with handicapped people, for example, or in shelters for battered women, where they attend to both Jews and Arabs, said Katharina von Münster, director of the Israel office. Some 1,500 ARSP volunteers have worked in Israel since 1961. A few of them even married Israelis or converted to Judaism and stayed in the country.

Picking sides isn't easy

German volunteers have a very strong wish to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, commented Kübler. "All our respondents said they fell in love with the country, but suffer under the complexity of the situation. They tried to identify with one side in the conflict and realized it's not so easy," he explained, "So some decided to identify with the other side."

Only few young Germans take part in pro-Palestinian protests, said Kübler: "It's still difficult for Germans to criticize Israel openly."

Kübler, who had just arrived in Israel for the first time, was sent to Bil'in to study the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He was as shocked as his Israeli co-traveler Yael Wiener to discover that the Israeli soldiers dispersed the militant demonstrators with tear-gas grenades. "Had I had known that, I definitely wouldn't have gone there," he said.

However, he doesn't regret the tear-gas trauma. Running for safety together with Wiener, they got to know each other - and got married in Heidelberg just a few hours before the premiere of the play, "The Peace Syndrome."

A few days later, Kübler moved to Israel where he is learning Hebrew and intends to manage German-Israeli projects.

Author: Igal Avidan

Editor: Kate Bowen