“I like to think of peace as the harmony of differences,” said Austrian volunteer Gabriel Böhler. Mr. Böhler is currently serving as an Austrian Friedensdiener or “peace servant” at the International Peace Museum in Dayton, Ohio. Austrian peace servants are volunteers in the Austrian Service Abroad (Österreichischer Auslandsdienst) that collaborate in projects of peace-building, peace-pedagogics, women’s rights, reconciliation and the commemoration of atrocities other than the Holocaust. Friedensdiener are one of the three pillars of the Austrian Service Abroad, together with Gedenkdiener or “memorial servants,” which work on Holocaust issues and with organizations that support Jewish culture and life, and Sozialdiener, which work on international development in the fields of education, support of people with special needs, environmental protection, medicine, economic development and infrastructure building.

The International Peace Museum in Dayton, Ohio, raises awareness of nonviolent strategies for achieving peace while honoring the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords that ended the war in Bosnia. The museum features a permanent exhibit on the “Lessons of the Dayton Accords,” has rotating temporary exhibits, and conducts regular outreach and events dealing with paths to peace.

Mr. Böhler hails from Dornbirn, Austria and will be in volunteering at the International Peace Museum in Dayton from September 2023 through April 2024.

© ÖB Washington / Böhler