with Author/Photographer Alvin Gilens

 

Why would a Holocaust survivor in Philadelphia who as a child had narrowly escaped a concentration camp in Nazi Germany agree to meet with a young German, whose grandfather may have been a Nazi? Why would the granddaughter of a Waffen-SS soldier come to the New York to give one year of her life working as a volunteer with Holocaust survivors who may possibly confront her every day with questions about what her grandfather did during the Holocaust?

These and other questions are discussed in the book "Reconciling Lives" by author and photographer Alvin Gilens. Reconciling Lives features the young men and women who participated in a one-year program with the German non-profit Action Reconciliation Service for Peace www.actionreconciliation.org (ARSP) in the United States, Israel, Great Britain and the Czech Republic in 2009-10. It tells their stories and those of the survivors they befriended, the organizations with which they worked, and how lives were changed.

Join us for a talk by author Alvin Gilens and panel discussion including young Germans and Americans on the topic of reconciliation.