Dialogue as a sign of hope

War in Gaza, wars in numerous other countries. In most cases, there is little hope for an end to the fighting, for peace. Nevertheless, there are sometimes encouraging signs, attempts to break through the friend-enemy mould. The German-Israeli peace researcher Dan Bar-On (1938 - 2008) knew how to set such signs. Bar-On brought Holocaust survivors into dialogue with the descendants of high-ranking Nazis. He later initiated talks between Israelis and Palestinians. His daughter Yaraah Bar-On has now presented Bar-On's tape recordings as a special gift to the Jena Centre for Reconciliation Studies at the University of Jena. With the help of the universitys multimedia centre, the tapes are to be digitized and will be made available by the Thuringian University and State Library for future research.

A good place to get into dialogue with each other

"An enemy is someone whose History you have not yet heard," says Prof. Dr Martin Leiner, Director of the Jena Centre for Reconciliation Research. Dan Bar-On was committed to this principle. In keeping with this ideal, on 20 June in the Senate Hall of the Friedrich Schiller University Jena, not only were the tapes handed over to the ThULB. In a subsequent workshop entitled "Paths for Reconciliation", the focus was on the dialogue between Yaraah Bar-On and Rim Assadi. A dialogue between Dan Bar-On's daughter, who is also active as a peace activist, and the Palestinian lawyer Rim Assadi, who is committed to patients' rights and distributive justice. "Of course we wanted to send a signal that Jena is a good place for Israelis and Palestinians to talk to each other," said Martin Leiner.