Descendants of Jewish Holocaust Survivors
& the Third Reich

The Workshop

Descendants of Holocaust survivors and The Third Reich are invited to participate in a one-day workshop. Jews, Germans, Austrians and other nationalities affected by World War II and the Holocaust will explore their past as well as their common future by sharing their personal stories, and taking steps towards healing their personal and collective wounds. Through drama, expressive arts, dialogue and therapeutic processes, participants will give shape and meaning to their Holocaust legacies.

Healing the Wounds of History

Healing the Wounds of History is a process in which experiential techniques are used to work with a group of participants who share a common legacy of historical trauma. The process was developed by Armand Volkas, MFT, a psychotherapist and drama therapist from Berkeley, California. Volkas is the son of Auschwitz survivors and resistance fighters from World War II. He was moved by his personal struggle with this legacy of historical trauma to address the issues that arose from it: identity, victimization and perpetration, meaning and grief. Healing the Wounds of History helps participants work through the burden of such legacies by transforming their pain into constructive action.

We invite Germans and Jews who are willing to be emotional pioneers for their cultures to participate in this workshop:

• Breaking the taboo against Germans and Jews speaking to each other.
• Humanizing each other through sharing our personal stories.
• Taking steps towards healing personal and collective wounds using creative and experiential methods.
• Transforming historical trauma into constructive action—acts of creation and acts of service.

Facilitator Bios

Armand Volkas, MFT, RDT/BCT, is a psychotherapist and Registered Drama Therapist in private practice and Clinical Director of the Living Arts Counseling Center in Oakland, California. In addition, Armand is Associate Professor in the Counseling Psychology Program at California Institute of Integral Studies and Adjunct Professor at John F. Kennedy University. He has developed innovative programs using drama therapy and expressive arts therapies for social change, intercultural conflict resolution, reconciliation and intercultural communication. Armand directs Healing the Wounds of History, a therapeutic approach in which theatre techniques are used to work with groups of participants from two cultures with a common legacy of violent conflict and historical trauma. Healing the Wounds of History has received international recognition for its work in bringing groups in conflict together: Germans and Jews; Palestinians and Israelis; Japanese, Chinese and Koreans; Armenians and Turks; African-Americans and European-Americans.

Eva Leveton, MS, MFT, is a psychotherapist in private practice and a professor of Drama therapy at the California Institute of Integral Studies. She is the author of three books, A Clinician's Guide to Psychodrama and Adolescent Crisis: Approaches in Family Therapy, as well as articles and poems. Her most recent book is a memoir entitled, Eva's Berlin: The Memory of a Wartime Childhood, which recalls her experience as a half-Jewish girl growing up in War-torn Berlin.Her work has taken her around the world, most recently back to Germany and to China. She is currently editing a book on the use of drama with populations in crisis because of socio-political oppression and natural disaster.
* * * Eva's Berlin: Memories of a Wartime Childhood
by Eva Leveton

A Must Read for All Ages
review by Nancy Spring, April 28, 2000

This brave and spirited Berlin child takes us through her years in that war-torn country. While living with her Aryan mother and grandparents, her Jewish father having fled with his life to America, she describes a gripping tale of survival, rich in historical detail. This is also a poignant story of the girl's family as well as her own coming of age. The author has obviously integrated her life , her psyche and times , and we, the readers, learn a great deal about the whole gamut of human experience from innocence and wounding to survival and healing. The words are painted on the page with bold, powerful strokes of honesty and emotion, colored in with soft hues of feminine similes and metaphors, sprinkled delightfully with her own astonishingly beautiful poetry, and etched golden with her deep reservoir of hope and spirituality. It has taken Eva Leveton 62 years to write this book, and we all bow to her strength, spiritedness, and talent.