A middle-aged woman wearing a blue sweatshirt and a denim skirt stops for a moment at one of several display tables at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial museum in Jerusalem. ‘I don't believe this,' she says, pointing to a book called Christians Repent for 2000 Years of Antisemitism. ‘Not true.'

Sister Cherubina Toebbicke, who is manning the table alone while her fellow visitor from Germany attends one of the Holocaust Remembrance Day conference workshops, looks unfazed. ‘You can't be offended because she's offended,' she says in her soft, calm voice, graying hair tucked into a simple white headcloth held up by the string under her chin. ‘You have to humble yourself under the wounds. There is reason for mistrust.'

Sister Cherubina, 44, is one of about 200 women who have dedicated their lives to eradicating that mistrust between Jews and Christians. She belongs to the Evangelical Sisterhood of Mary, a Protestant order within the framework of the German Evangelical Church.

Based in Darmstadt, a German city south of Frankfurt, the order was founded by Mother Basilea Schlink and Mother Martyria Madauss in 1947 as a reaction to the role of the Church in the Holocaust. Although both founders have since died, the nuns who follow in their footsteps pray for Israel regularly – before and after meals, and sometimes while doing the laundry or tending the garden of Kanaan, the biblical reference to Israel and the name of the Darmstadt grounds. They also atone for the Church's historic anti-Jewish antagonism.

‘By our actions we and our Christian forefathers have discredited the Gospel and brought shame upon the name of Jesus,' reads one of the sisterhood's fliers. ‘Repentance is what God is calling for.'

Proselytizing, say the nuns, plays no role whatsoever.

In April 1961 – coincidentally, the third day of the Eichmann trial – a residential area in Jerusalem's Talpiot neighbourhood became the site of the first international branch of the sisterhood. Called Beth Abraham because of the first patriarch's legendary hospitality, the branch is home to four nuns and free resort to about 80 Holocaust survivors (and spouses) a year.

The operation, whose slogan is ‘Weep with those who weep,' is named after the seven-week period between Passover and the Pentecost (Shavuot). The time serves as a countdown from the Jewish people's exodus from Egypt until their receipt of the Torah at Mount Sinai, and is also a quasi-mourning period in commemoration of the death of 24,000 scholars, all students of Rabbi Akiva, around 135 CE.

Operation Omer is a continuation of the sisterhood's Jerusalem 2001 convention, ‘Changing the Future by Confronting the Past,' during which about 1,000 Christians repudiated antisemitism on Holocaust Remembrance Day last year. The sisterhood also circulated a pledge, signed by more than 32,500 Christians from 36 countries, ‘to confess the crimes and injustices perpetrated against the Jewish people down through the centuries, for which the Christian Church bears heavy responsibility' and ‘to work tirelessly against antisemitism in all its forms.'

The sisterhood published a 213-page softcover book and a video related to last year's convention. The video has been broadcast by CNN and other stations in several countries, and the sisterhood has contributed the book to German libraries.

Differences between the nuns who live in Germany and those in Israel are evident in the complementary reasons they provide for such extensive publicity. The visiting Sister Davida focuses on the Christians who need educating, saying the material must be brought ‘to the largest public possible so that they also become conscious, and their attitude towards the Jewish people will change.'

But for Sister Gratia Britz, who has lived in Jerusalem for 27 of her 59 years, Operation Omer is necessary ‘so that the people of Israel see that there are Christians who stand with Israel, so Israel sees that we are with you,' she says. ‘Israel is so alone.'

‘We here in Israel want the cross to be very gentle,' explains Sister Gratia, ‘because of what happened in the name of the cross.' 

But perhaps the biggest difference is that the nuns here have a keener awareness of day-to-day Israeli life. Before answering any interview questions, Sister Gratia first comments on the day's major news, the death of 13 Israeli soldiers in Jenin. ‘It's a hard day for Israel,' she says. ‘It pains my heart.' 

German nuns call Beth Abraham to find out what's really going on in Israel, says 76-year-old Sister Irene Molineus, who joined the sisterhood the year it was founded and has lived in Israel for 42 years. ‘What they hear on the news is sometimes totally different from what Israel says. You have to live here to understand the situation,' she says. 

The nuns in both countries say the political situation in the Middle East stems from one of the Church's major theological mistakes. The ‘bitter legacy' of Christian supercessionism, which holds that the Christians replaced the Jews in God's eyes, has paved the way for Islam to claim it has superseded both Christianity and Judaism, the sisters say. 

‘Islam has adopted the teaching of Church fathers that Israel has no further role in God's redemptive purposes and therefore no right to the land covenanted to her by God,' reads part of the Operation Omer literature. 

The house boasts four double guest bedrooms and two single guest bedrooms – each equipped with a sink, mirror, and closet space, and each named after a biblical person or place. A picture of Mount Sinai hangs in the Moses room. 

The resort's aim is to allow the women and couples who stay there to rest comfortably and see Jerusalem, and word of mouth alone has generated a three-year waiting list.

Although guests – eight people at a time stay for eight days – usually begin coming right after Passover and continue through mid-November, the nuns decided to postpone guest season this year. Many people are afraid to walk in Jerusalem, they say, and they hope to begin hosting in early May.

Although most of the sisterhood –130 nuns – lives in the Darmstadt headquarters, full-time branches also exist in America, Australia, Brazil, Canada, England, Holland, Japan, Paraguay, and Switzerland. Israel's branch is the only one that also serves as a guest house.

The nuns take visitors to the Western Wall, the Great Synagogue, the Biblical Zoo, and the Israel Museum.

Guests who would rather not venture too far can sit in the small gazebo or on the balcony's cushion-covered plastic chairs and survey the garden. Tasteful lights illuminate the stone garden path at night. The nuns do most of the gardening, just as they clean, cook meatless kosher meals, lead their guests in non-sectarian morning prayer, and celebrate the Sabbath with them.

Dvora Cohen, a conference attendee who conducts student trips to Poland, takes the free book, pamphlets, and video, but says she will screen it for missionary matter before deciding whether to show it to her students. ‘I would like to see if this is really repentance or if this is just propaganda,' she says.

But other conference participants tell them bits of their life stories. A slightly stooped woman comes by the table and tells Sister Cherubina of her 1942 escape from a Polish ghetto to the villages in which she hid. The fact that some survivors choose to share their past with the nuns ‘touches us deeply,' says Sister Davida. The ‘love and the friendship which comes to us, although they know we are Germans' is not something the nuns take for granted, she says.

The Polish woman is about the same age as Sister Irene, but the nun experienced World War II entirely differently: as an observer rather than a participant.

A classmate simply disappeared. Irene asked no questions.

In a post-war search for something ‘worth living for,' Irene, then 22, joined the Sisterhood of Mary around the time of its 1947 dedication. Discovering the extent of German cruelty was difficult, she says: ‘We're the generation that grew up in the time of Hitler. The responsibility for everything that happened fell on us, it's for us to live with.'

Sister Irene was forced to confront the role she played by her indifference, she says. Through the convent, she found something she could do about it: ‘Give my life to the people of Israel and to God.' That gift has merited appreciation from some of its recipients. One man comes over to the conference table to send regards to a nun who treated his wife in Tel Hashomer hospital, near Tel Aviv, in the 1950s. From 1957 until Beth Abraham was built four years later, some of the nuns – including Sister Irene – lived in Haifa, where they took care of hospitalized Holocaust survivors.

The Gellers were dripping with rain when they arrived at the guest house from their home in Kiryat Bialik, near Haifa, two and a half years after they first sent a letter indicating their interest and were told it would take a while until they could be accommodated. One of the nuns ushered them in quickly and brought a towel to dry off their belongings.

Bracha remembers she wanted to clean off her luggage, but the nun did it instead. ‘She said, "You're here to feel comfortable,"' recalls Bracha.

Staying there, says Bracha, ‘gives your mind a rest.' Bracha appreciates the nuns' mission. ‘Not everyone knows how to ask forgiveness, and they know how,' she says. ‘I wish the whole German nation were like them.'

‘I wish the whole Israeli nation were like them – we wouldn't fight amongst ourselves.' And, she adds, the nuns ‘don't try to influence anybody' to change their religion.

Shlomo Geller doesn't talk about his Holocaust experiences, finding it too painful to discuss even when his children ask, says Bracha. But others do feel the need to share – and the nuns have found that the most seemingly innocuous item can sometimes serve as a catalyst.

The nuns had given to each guest a piece of paper with a hopeful verse from the Bible and placed each verse in the mouth of a little fake bird covered with feathers. Suddenly, the guest announced she needed to say something and began speaking about waiting at the entrance to a concentration camp, not knowing whether the Nazis would assign her to work or to die. At that point, relates Sister Gratia, ‘she said, "God, give me wings like a bird so I can run away from death."' The woman was chosen for the work camp.

The relationships that develop between the nun-hosts and survivor-guests afford the nuns a close look at the people on whose behalf they spend their lives repenting. ‘They discuss what they went through; they can't forget, it's impossible,' says Sister Gratia. ‘Everything's together, happiness and a deep sadness.'

Sister Gratia is glad for the opportunity to help provide a week of relaxation and happiness as a counterbalance to the pain and sadness that cannot be excised, or even untangled. The nun, who grew up in Austria and joined the sisterhood at 21, says her family had no ties to either Hitler or Israel – and she never expected to find herself in a habit. ‘I wasn't looking for life in a convent,' she says. ‘I was looking for a deep life filled with meaning, and that's what I found.'