Giving young people their say

 

Every voice is heard: The German-Israeli Youth Congress in Berlin brings together young people from Israel and Germany.

 

There are 20 young people on the stage. They dance, they demonstrate, they provoke, they interrupt one another, and they hurl statements at the audience. “We must fight for our country!” exclaims a young woman with long brown hair. “Enough pain, enough tears, enough suffering,” someone else declares. For the German-Israeli theatre project “Translating Tracks into Life”, the Israeli and German participants collated opinions and assessed the mood in their home countries in summer 2014. The result is an impressive play championing respect and turning on discrimination. And it has met with rave reviews in Berlin, Jerusalem, Herzliya and around the Sea of Galilee.

 

The performance was realized in close cooperation between Ludwig-Wolker-Haus, a German centre for youth exchange, and Tzofim, the Israel Boy and Girl Scouts Federation. A workshop focussed specifically on two questions: What is the individual’s responsibility and how can individuals express themselves? The debate was intensive, and the young people conducted it with all their hearts. And at the end of the workshop everyone agreed: “It’s better to accept there will be misunderstandings than for a single voice not to be heard.” The workshop was supported by ConAct - the centre coordinating the German-Israeli youth exchange programme - as well as the Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future and the F. C. Flick Foundation.

 

The art project, with its strong social commitment, will be performed at the German-Israeli Youth Congress in Berlin and will doubtless cause a real stir. At the congress, which takes place from 8-12 May, young people from both countries will debate German-Israeli relations and the importance such ties have for them. It is the key event being hosted by the German Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth to mark the 50th anniversary of the initiation of diplomatic relations between Israel and Germany. In the form of small and large panel discussions, the young people will together devise prospective ideas for the future. The event will close with the ideas being presented as a list of recommendations to politicians from both countries.

 

Alongside performances of plays such as “Translating Tracks into Life” there will be exhibitions, workshops and concerts destined to give congress participants cause for thought and discussion. A series of short films will also be screened – they paint a very vibrant picture of German-Israeli relations. For the five films, 22 young people from the two countries headed out on a kind of filmic expedition in March, taking countless questions along with them. For example: How are family biographies narrated down through the generations? What cultural specificities are there and how strongly does our shared history shape how the one side sees the other’s country? For example, German student Annika Fiegehenn and her team hit the streets of Tel Aviv and Berlin and asked passersby. “Most people were very open, and particularly young people raved about Berlin and German football,” is how the 26-year-old remembers what she experienced in Israel. Fiegehenn was surprised how positively many Israelis view Germany. By contrast, in Berlin it was harder to get people to comment – and they primarily associated Israel with the Middle East conflict. “Only a very few actually knew an Israeli,” says Fiegehenn. This she feels clearly shows how important German-Israeli exchanges are. “You can only overcome prejudices and stereotypes if you are in a country, talk to people, and get to know people during their daily lives.”

 

The short films were made as part of the “Spotlight on … - 50 Years Israel & Germany” youth project, which kicked off the cooperation between ConAct and the Israel Youth Exchange Authority (IYEA) on the anniversary of German-Israeli relations. Both organizations have been collaborating closely since 2001.

 

21-year-old Israeli Alon Spitzer is currently a volunteer at ConAct in Wittenberg. He took part in producing a film on the history and significance of German-Israeli youth exchanges. The film also addresses whether such projects still achieve anything today. “It was pretty difficult to get anyone to comment negatively on our initial question,” Spitzer recalls. He himself once took part in such an exchange programme, and for him it’s a slam-dunk: “If you get to know people from a particular country in person, you get a completely different picture of them.”