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1. When, where did Ivan Holdeman serve in PAX?
   see below.

   http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSfn=ivan&GSmid=46892922&GRid=20816439&

   Comment by adalbert goertz — August 6, 2007 #

2. Hi, Adalbert:

   Ivan served as the first PAX director of the Greece program. If you will check Urie Bender’s Soldiers of Campassion, you will find he started 8/22/51, which is correct, as far as I know (p. 294).

   Cheers, my friend.

   Cal

   Comment by calvin redekop — August 8, 2007 #

3. I was in the first group of Paxers who spent time in Neuweid, Germany. While out walking one day, some of us discovered a synagogue surrounded by barbed wire and almost covered with overgrown weeds.

   We mentioned it to the German man who owned the block factory and he was really upset that we were there and saw that synagogue. Based on his negative reaction I often have wondered if he had any involvement in the disappearance of the Jews from this community.

   Since that time I have often wondered what it would have been like to clean up this place of worship. Then I wonder what kind of reaction we would have gotten from this man and the townspeople if we had cleaned it up.

   One can be a conscientious object to a war but not to the horrors committed on the Jews. At a Pax reunion many years ago the question came up about why no one in Pax ever talked about this issue: why we were friends with people who had a hand in annihilating so many innocent Jews. Some of the guys even stayed up all night talking about this ethical dilemma.

   I feel I was really naive and I regret my lack of awareness of the horror that had taken place in areas where I lived and worked.

   Al Roupp

   Comment by alroupp — May 28, 2009 #

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