The Hamburg TRT Seminar: storytelling in the service of peace building

The TRT (To Reflect and Trust) approach of bringing together descendants of Holocaust survivors and descendants of Nazi perpetrators was very much inspired by the work of the late Don Schon. Basically, this approach relies on dialogues in which participants share their personal life stories, thereby enabling members of German and Jewish groups reflect on their personal and collective history as victims and victimizers. The present paper describes a new phase of the TRT group, when it brought together, in the framework of the Hamburg seminar, practitioners from South Africa, Northern Ireland and Palestinians and Israelis who work in current conflicts, with victims and victimizers. The question was: Is the TRT process, dealing with a past man-made catastrophe through methods of storytelling, valid for professionals who try to help people move out of current conflicts into peace building?