Winners of Holocaust Writing/Art Contest in Local Newspapers

Bellevue girl honored in Holocaust writing, art contest
Bellevue Reporter
May 10, 2010

Caroline Nelson, a student from Ann Gilbert’s class at Forest Ridge School of the Sacred Heart in Bellevue won Honorable Mention in the 7th and 8th grade art category in the 2010 Jacob Friedman Holocaust Writing and Art Contest.

Her art piece was one of 750 entries that dealt with the question: How would your life be different if people were more respectful and tolerant of each other’s differences? How does change begin with you?

The contest was sponsored by the Washington State Holocaust Education Resource Center

Caroline's explained her art work as follows:
"All these girls helped me take this picture. It took plenty of planning, but we all got together to take the picture.

What if the world did that? If the whole world got together to help another country, I would think that, by rising as one, we’d fix that country’s problem.

I asked several girls what their main heritage was. I wrote the names of all the different [heritages] onto shirts.

I was amazed by how many different [ones] we had at our school. I was amazed how all of them were my friends. That’s how change starts with me."... Read full article

Inspired Cedar Heights Middle School students place in Jacob Friedman art and essay competition
Covington Reporter News
May 14, 2010

A pair of Cedar Heights Middle School students earned prizes in the Jacob Friedman Holocaust Writing and Art Contest held by the Washington State Holocaust Education Resource Center.

Both students, Laylan Tahir and Lucas Reider, are eighth graders in Sylvia O’Brien’s class at Cedar Heights.

“Students across the district, around the state and across the country study the Holocaust to learn about our world, past and present,” O’Brien explained via e-mail. “Many Kent students have spent several months studying the Holocaust and will attend three speaker symposiums. The Washington State Holocaust Research Center, located on Mercer Island, sponsors a contest each year to help further this study.”*

This year the focus was on Anne Frank, who often looked out at a chestnut tree she could see from her hiding place, and a sapling from that tree will be planted in Volunteer Park in Seattle.
Tahir won first place in the seventh and eighth grade writing category.

“Her essay compared her mother, who was a survivor of the Saddam Hussein regime and genocide of the Kurds, to Anne Frank,” O’Brien said.

The following is an excerpt from the entry:
Do you know the story behind my face? What do you see when you look at me? Do you see a typical teenage girl? Are you going to judge me without knowing me? I am a thirteen-year-old Kurdish girl; Anne Frank was a thirteen-year-old Jewish girl. They say there is no such thing as perfection. Although I believe that if people had more respect and tolerance for one another, that saying would definitely be proven wrong. The world would be better.

Reider won third place in the seventh and eighth grace art category. Inspired by Anne Frank’s view of the tree from her hiding place, he created a picture of the chestnut tree reaching through the earth spreading tolerance and change, respect and peace... Read full article

*The Washington State Holocaust Education Resource Center is located in downtown Seattle.

Miep Gies passes away at age 100

By ARTHUR MAX, Associated Press Writer

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands – Miep Gies, the office secretary who defied the Nazi occupiers to hide Anne Frank and her family for two years and saved the teenager's diary, has died, the Anne Frank Museum said Tuesday. She was 100.

Read more...

In the Seattle Times - "Seattle to get Anne Frank sapling"

In today's Seattle Times!

Seattle to get Anne Frank Sapling!

Holocaust Center receives an Anne Frank Tree Sapling!

The Holocaust Center is one of 11 institutions in the country to receive an Anne Frank Tree Sapling! Read about it in today's New York Times!

For Anne Frank's Tree, 11 New Places to Bloom

The sapling, applied for by the Holocaust Center and Seattle Parks and Recreation, will be planted in Volunteer Park in Seattle. Anne Frank's tree is a symbol of tolerance.

More details coming soon!

Saint George’s Students Finish Study of Holocaust with Visit to U.S. Holocaust Museum on Same Day as Shooting

SPOKANE, WA – Thirty Saint George’s middle schoolers who studied the Holocaust in class have just returned from a five-day tour of Washington DC landmarks that included the disconcerting experience of visiting the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum the same day it was attacked by a neo-Nazi gunman.

The students and two Saint George’s teachers toured the museum from 10:30 – 11:30 a.m. on Wednesday, June 10, and were on the opposite side of the museum building just over an hour later when the shooting occurred at 12:50 p.m. They were not in any immediate danger and didn’t learn what happened until later that day.

“It was a lesson we weren’t counting on, but it certainly reinforced what they had learned about hate crimes,” says Ruth Ann Johnson, SGS Middle School English teacher who was on the tour. Her 7th grade class reads Anne Frank’s diary, leading to student research projects on topics such as the Kristallnacht persecutions of the Jews and Nazi concentration camps.

The 7th and 8th grade students on the tour took both their visit to the museum and the news of the shooting very seriously. “We had an excellent discussion about the reality of violence that specifically targets certain people,” says Johnson. “This is why I teach the Holocaust, because this still happens today.”

The students’ tours that day had a broader theme of remembering acts of violence. They had begun with a tour of Ford’s Theater where President Lincoln was shot, before viewing the Holocaust Museum and ending their day at the Pentagon memorial to the victims of the September 11th attack. Now they have something else to remember from that day that will keep the lessons they learned in class very real for a long time to come.

Johnson serves on the Washington State Holocaust Education Resource Center’s advisory board. The Jewish Foundation for the Righteous has named her an Alfred Lerner Fellow at its Summer Institute for Teachers, and she has toured Holocaust sites in Amsterdam and Berlin on educational trip sponsored by the Holocaust Center and Museum Without Walls.

To arrange an interview with Ruth Ann Johnson about the school’s Holocaust curriculum and the students’ experiences in Washington DC, contact John Carter at 466-1636 x397 or at john.carter@sgs.org.

Students Create Birthday Cards in Honor of Anne Frank's Birthday

On June 12, 2009 Anne Frank would have been 80 years old. Jollie Evan's class at Tonasket Elementary School in Tonasket, wanted to make birthday cards for Anne as a special remembrance of her life.

http://mail.tonasket.wednet.edu/~jevans/?OpenItemURL=S005B6E9C

Thank you Ms. Evans for sending us this link and for letting us know about your class project!