Volunteering for survivors

Assael Häussler is an angel sent by heaven," Alex Turney gushes in his apartment high above the rooftops of Manhattan. Hard of hearing and with failing eyesight, the 96-year-old is grateful to Assael for devoting so much of his time to him. Assael is highly educated and so polite, Turney says with a smile. "Much more than I am."

Once a week, Assael Häussler drops in to give Alex Turney a helping hand. Yet for the most part, the two men talk. For instance about the years Turney lived in a Jewish orphanage in Berlin; the old man remembers those years as inspiring, giving him the opportunity to participate in the rich cultural life of the German capital. Turney also recounts his mother's escape from the Nazis by immigrating to America with her family in 1935.

"Assael is my link to Germany," says Turney. "I don’t have anybody over there anymore. My father, many members of my family and most of my friends were killed."

Yet from his own observations, as well as his talks with Assael, Turney is well aware that Germany has changed "one thousand percent."

Germany's Action Reconciliation Service for Peace (ARSP) peace organization has been active in the US since 1968. 45 years ago, US peace churches invited the first group of ARSP volunteers to help fight against racism and for peace in America. Meanwhile, the organization has sent more than a thousand volunteers to the US. Their activities have expanded to include looking after Holocaust survivors - that has in fact become an integral part of their work.

Invitation to tango

Assael is one of eight ARSP volunteers in New York. Although the young man only arrived two months ago, he and Alex Turney have already become so close that Assael was invited to the nonagenarian's birthday party.

As always, his guests tangoed. The dance still is Turney's great passion, and faded old photographs in his apartment show him and his late wife tearing across the dance floor. Of course, Assael Häussler also shook a leg at the party.

Jewish life in New York

The 21-year-old German Jew from Berlin has read and heard a lot about the Holocaust. "But talking to survivors is a totally different story," he says. "It's much more emotional, it’s a completely different experience."

Assael sees such direct contacts as a "gift" for which he feels grateful. Born in Germany to Jewish parents, he spent some time in Israel with his family before moving to Berlin. It turned out he actually attended the same school as Turney.

In New York, Assael has immersed himself into Jewish life in a way that he was never able to in Berlin. "I felt a strong desire to meet other Jews," Assael says, adding that was what motivated him to apply with the ARSP in New York.

Every Friday and Saturday, he goes to the synagogue, he regularly works out in a Jewish fitness studio, has become close friends with a Jewish family in New York and goes out on the town with the son of the local rabbi. But what impresses him most are his encounters with Holocaust survivors, whom he sees on a regular basis. "For the first time in my life, I feel like I know what it means to be Jewish", he says.

Stories of death and terror

Over and over again, the 15 "clients" he goes to see once a week tell him tales of death, terror and expulsion. Once in a while, he storms out of the house with tears in his eyes. Sometimes, it’s very hard to come to terms with it all, he sighs. In such moments, he feels lonely in New York, even though he has a low-priced flat rate that allows him to call up his mother for support and consolation. He has grown up a lot in just those few weeks, he muses.

Edith Kurzweil's dramatic escape story is another story that deeply moved him. The Austrian-born woman still remembers in detail standing in her parents' apartment and watching Hitler and the Germans march into Vienna. "My brother and I were glued to the window," she says, while the soldiers, singing and swinging flags, marched right by their house along Vienna’s main street.

Following the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany, her desperate parents placed her and her brother on a children’s transport to Brussels. A dark time full of deprivation began for Edith Kurzweil.

"People need to know what happened"

Edith Kurzweil is a renowned sociologist and author who taught for some time in Frankfurt, where she made the acquaintance of famous German psychoanalysts Margarete and Alexander Mitscherlich.

Getting together with Assael is close to her heart because "people need to be told what happened." Edith Kurzweil enjoys the long talks with the young German whom she calls "kid", no matter how grown-up he may think he is. After all, he could well be her grandson, Kurzweil adds, and looks out of her living room window overlooking Central Park, at the golden foliage of the trees glowing in the evening sun.

"Am I a survivor?" she asks, without expecting a response from Assael.

At first, she did not feel like one, as she had never been in a concentration camp, she says. "But psychologically speaking, I suffered immensely." Today, she is capable of talking about the Nazi era in an almost relaxed fashion, she says, although she does remember once rejecting a dinner invitation simply because it came from a German. Even thought he was very handsome, she adds with wry humor.

Life in New York

Clearly, Assael Häussler and Edith Kurzweil have something in common, even if the young man doesn't appear to have a clue that he is face to face with quite an intellectual authority. After an hour, they make an appointment for the following week before hugging goodbye.

New York and its Jewish life strongly attract Assael Häussler. And he doesn't believe this fascination will turn out to be short-lived. He is already considering staying in New York to study after his stint as with the ARSP ends. That would certainly be good news for both Edith Kurzweil and Alex Turney.