 February 2003
American Friends Service Committee Peacework Magazine Patrica Watson, Editor Sara Burke, Assistant Editor Pat Farren, Founding Editor 2161 Massachusetts Ave. Telephone number: Fax number:
pwork@igc.org Peacework has been published monthly since 1972, intended to serve as a source of dependable information to those who strive for peace and justice and are committed to furthering the nonviolent social change necessary to achieve them. Rooted in Quaker values and informed by AFSC experience and initiatives, Peacework offers a forum for organizers, fostering coalition-building and teaching the methods and strategies that work in the global and local community. Peacework seeks to serve as an incubator for social transformation, introducing a younger generation to a deeper analysis of problems and issues, reminding and re-inspiring long-term activists, encouraging the generations to listen to each other, and creating space for the voices of the disenfranchised. Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC. |
Notes on viewing the Exhibit Rick Pierik is a fundraiser for the AFSC. Two years ago, I sat with 200 people in the Arch Street Meeting House in downtown Philadelphia and listened as a man recounted a tragic and terrific story from his youth. He recalled for us growing up Jewish in a small town on the German side of the border with France in the 1930s. A Quaker woman living in the town befriended his family and taught him and his younger brother how to ice skate on the river that ran along the border. At the time, he remembered, the woman seemed merely to be acting in kindness towards the boys. But several weeks later, as Nazi forces approached the town, and rumors of their activities spread, the real value of the woman's lessons became apparent. Later that winter she helped the boys skate across the river into what was then unoccupied France, from whence they escaped first to England and then to America. By the end of his story the man had burst into tears of joy at the thought of an entire exhibit chronicling what has been the defining moment of his life. This man's powerful testimony ushered in the US opening for the exhibit "Quiet Helpers: Quaker Service in Postwar Germany." At the time of the opening two years ago, the US was at a relative state of peace in the world. That seems almost as far away today as the man's story. Quiet Helpers is now on display at the Boston Public Library, very close to my home. It documents the history of Quakers--particularly the AFSC--primarily focusing on the tremendous relief efforts AFSC undertook during and after World Wars I & II. I've been back to see it three times now, surprised each time by the fresh intimacy and alarming relevance it has acquired over these two years. US leaders are creating vast refugee populations through military aggression and economic sanctions, denying visas to foreigners, and rounding up people in the US for no other reason than their race and ethnicity. "This exhibit opens at a painfully appropriate time," remarked Paul Lacey, at the Boston opening for Quiet Helpers. He's right; in many ways it's 1942 all over again. I couldn't help but wonder how many Iraqis would be recounting their stories of escape and survival at similar exhibits in 2053. Is Quiet Helpers merely a witness to these tragic cycles of history?
After the opening on my way out,
I noticed a journal set up for visitors to chronicle their impressions
of the exhibit. Most visitors had never heard of Quakers or of
the Service Committee; many chose to chronicle the inspiration
they received from the exhibit. One in particular wrote about
how this made her so proud of AFSC and the Quakers, and how it
helped galvanize her sentiment against the threat of war on Iraq.
Upon reading this, I realized the true gifts of this exhibit:
it not only provides us with an opportunity to probe history and
our feelings about war, it offers us an invitation to service.
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