Religion: Operation Penance

In the Dutch town of Joure last week, 16 young Germans—eleven boys and five girls from 16 to 24—were hard at work building a youth center and studying Hebrew in preparation for work in Israel. In the French village of Taizé, 30 young Germans were working on a new church that will take 14 months to build. None of these youngsters, or the dozens who labored before them on similar projects in Norway, Holland and Greece, expect to be paid a cent. They are working to expiate the guilt of their parents’ generation in the demonic days of the Nazis.

The idea for this penance corps came from Berlin’s Pastor Lothar Kreyssig, a president of the German Evangelical Church, which threw its weight behind the plan. Funds are supplied almost entirely by some 900 West Berliners, who give $4,250 a month for operational expenses, including an allowance of 50¢ a day for the volunteers. More money will soon be needed for a number of ambitious projects, including a Jewish community center in Lyon, a youth center in Rotterdam and work in three Israeli kibbutzim. And plans were being polished in Berlin last week to send twelve young men (average age: 20) to rebuild into a youth center the sacristy of England’s famed Luftwaffe-blasted Coventry Cathedral.

Kreyssig is delighted with the spirit of the young Germans—many of whom are not specifically religious but are moved by the desire to “seek reconciliation with those who have the right to be against us.”