Couple's long road to peace and love

[Kadie]

Couple's long road to peace and love
Louise Rafkin, Special to The Chronicle
Sunday, February 27, 2011



Rolf Beier and Florence Beier relaxing at home in San Mateo, Calif., on Thursday, February 3, 2011. Dedicated peace activists, they are members of the Beyond War movement, and also participated in an Israel and Palestinian peace group. Rolf was a German soldier, and Florence is Jewish.
Photo: Liz Hafalia / The Chronicle

It was the summer of 1948 and Florence Ilfeld, then 19, was visiting her family in Taos, N.M., before her second year of college at Stanford. The Ilfelds, a well-established pioneer family that had settled there in the 1880s, were unusual. Unlike most Western pioneers, they were Jewish, though not particularly religious.

Meanwhile, Rolf Beier, then 25, was studying geology in his native Germany. A former member of Hitler Youth, he'd been drafted by the Nazis in 1942. Wounded several times, while fighting on the Russian front, he'd also been imprisoned in France for more than a year.

After returning home postwar, he saw American volunteers - Quakers - doing relief work. "What gives?" he thought. "They were my enemy and now they are helping us?" He volunteered to help alongside them.

The same Quakers were organizing a summer camp in New Mexico to bring together youth from many countries on both sides. From hundreds of German applicants, Rolf and seven others were chosen to participate. Florence was also attending.

"When I arrived, it was like, 'Here comes the German soldier,' " Rolf says. But in the atmosphere of peacemaking and reconciliation - and listening - the group was soon all hugs and kisses.


Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/02/25/LV9H1HG0KE.DTL#ixzz1FBIXm1WD

[snappyturtle]

1. Good story....we need more of these stories on the 'news' to replace

the celebrity happenings, etc. Maybe they would slowly help the human race evolve.

[Kadie]

2. If only it would happen.

Would be nice.

:)