GERMAN YOUTHS CARE FOR HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS

Trying to heal Nazi wounds: Young German volunteers deal with their nation's guilt by going to Israel to care for Holocaust survivors. (Los Angeles Times)

MAALOT-TARSHIHA, Israel — Franz Feibel spent five years in Buchenwald concentration camp, helplessly watching the ashes of Jewish prisoners spew out of the crematorium smokestack. Today, at age 93 and in a nursing home, he is cared for by Oliver Raag, a German geriatric nurse whose grandfather transported disabled Jews and other Germans to a gas chamber. Raag is one of more than 100 Germans doing volunteer work in Israel at any given time to atone for the deeds of their parents and grandparents. "The more I learned about that period in German history, the more I wanted to come here to show that there are other Germans who are not like the Nazis," said Raag, 30. The relationship between the Germans and elderly Israelis is often ambivalent. Some of the survivors still can't bear to hear German spoken, while others say their idealistic young caregivers are a comfort.