An evening with Sister Renate Seebass and Prof. Mona Sue Weissmark

A CO-PRESENTATION WITH THE ISRAELI CONSULATE GENERAL

When: Thursday, February 24, 2005, 6:00 pm
Where: Goethe-Institut
150 N. Michigan Ave.
Chicago, IL 60601
Tel: 312.263.0472
Fax: 312.263.0476

Free and Open to the Public
Reception to Follow

When will we help someone? What are the circumstances that prompt people to help or not? Sister Renate Seebass will shed light on the story of why one German family risked their lives to help strangers. In April 1945, Adolf Weissmark and his friend had fled the concentration camp of Lagenstein-Zwieberge, and managed to reach the nearby village of Bornecke. There, starving, covered in lice and ill with typhus and dysentery, they collapsed on the doorstep of pastor Julius Seebass.

The pastor's wife and daughters, Renate and Ricarda, bathed and clothed the two young men and nursed them back to health, and the two men were welcomed into the family. They remained with the Seebass family for several months until they could emigrate to America. Ricarda, who had contracted typhus, probably while tending to the two men, died shortly after they left, and Renate moved to England a few years later, where she became an Anglican nun.

Nearly sixty years have passed, but Sister Renate says she was so moved by the young men's rescue that it has affected her whole life. Sister Renate will discuss her experience and help us understand why some people retain their human compassion even as others have let theirs go.

Mona Sue Weissmark received her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and completed a three-year postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. She headed the Harvard Holocaust Conference Research project and was on the faculty of the Harvard University Medical School. She is a visiting Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Northwestern University.

A CO-PRESENTATION WITH THE ISRAELI CONSULATE GENERAL