The Holocaust Speaker Series, held each Wednesday at 11:00 am, features Holocaust survivors and descendants of survivors sharing stories of life before, during, and after the Holocaust. Join us on Wednesday, January 4, at 11 a.m. for a special presentation with Mats Michaelsen.
Mats is a volunteer spending a year at the Nancy & David Wolf Holocaust and Humanity Center. He is from Ilsede, Germany where he just finished high school and will start studying once he returns. During his time in school, Mats tried to learn as much as possible about the processes that led to the Holocaust in his country and is still interested in improving his understanding of the time through different perspectives. He likes to share his experience in growing up in the society of the perpetrators but is also keen to exchange that with people coming from a different history. As a young German, he feels the responsibility to keep the memory of this horrific atrocity alive and make an effort to improve the world we all live in. This motivation led him to apply for an international young adult volunteer program, Action 
Reconciliation Service for Peace (ARSP). This is known as peace service because, in co-operation with our partners, volunteers develop their understanding of history and other cultures and societies, whilst experiencing and accepting different patterns of thought and behaviour. Nowadays, due to generational change, ARSP volunteers do not act from a feeling of personal guilt, but rather from the conviction that they want to make a positive contribution toward a more peaceful, just and tolerant world. Every year around 180 volunteers, mostly aged between nineteen and twenty five are active for ARSP in thirteen different countries on a variety of educational, historical, political and social projects.
Sponsored by Margaret and Michael Valentine and presented in partnership with the Harriet and Kenneth Kupferberg Holocaust Center and Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage.