Search this site by entering keywords in the box below followed by the keyboard ENTER key.

{Posted to this site on 3/07/2004 }

The United Jewish Community of the Virginia Peninsula Presents

The Third Annual HOLOCAUST Writing Competition for Students

January, 2004
 
“If I am not for myself, then who will be for me?
And if I am only for myself, then what am I?
And if not now, when?”
(Hillel the Elder, 35BC)

This competition is made possible through the generosity of the National Council of Jewish Women, Hampton Roads Section and the Sarfan/Gary S. and William M. Nachman Philanthropic Fund.

The United Jewish Federation of Tidewater has graciously provided background and research.

Earn books for your classroom simply by submitting your students' work in the Holocaust Writing Competition

All teachers who submit at least 22 original student entries may choose one title from the following lists. Simply fill in the information below and return this page with your students' entries. If you teach smaller classes, please call us regarding the number of entries needed to qualify for this program. A substantially similar entry will not be counted toward the minimum requirement.

All entries must meet competition guidelines. We will deliver or mail the books to you at your school. If there is another book related to teaching tolerance that is not on the list, or other educational materials you would like, please notify us, and we will consider your request. Please note that the books are presented to the teachers for the school's use

Name of Teacher: ____________________________________________________
Name of School: _____________________________________________________
School Address: _____________________________________________________
School Telephone:(__)_________________
Class Size: ______
Subject Teaching: ____________________________________________________

For questions, please contact: Holocaust Writing Competition Committee
Sue Friedman, Chair - (757) 259-1116 or Sandy Katz, Vice Chair - (757) 868-7704

Are you preparing your students for the SOL tests?

Social Studies SOL Skills

• Identify, analyze, and interpret primary source documents, records, and data, including artifacts, diaries, letters, photographs, journals, newspapers, historical accounts, and art to increase the understanding of events and life in the United States
  
• Evaluate the authenticity, authority, and credibility of sources
  
• Formulate historical questions and defend findings based on inquiry and interpretation
  
• Develop perspectives of time and place, including the construction of maps and various time lines of events, period, and personalities in American history
  
• Communicate findings (orally and) in analytical essays and/or comprehensive papers
  
• Develop skills in (discussion, debate, and) persuasive writing with respect to enduring issues and determine how divergent viewpoints have been addressed and reconciled
  
• Apply geographic skills and reference sources to understand how relationships between humans and their environment have changed over time
  
• Interpret the significance of excerpts from famous speeches and other documents
  

Language Arts/English SOL Skills

• Read and understand information from varied sources
  
• Apply knowledge of resources in preparing written (and oral) presentations
  
• Credit the sources of both quoted and paraphrased ideas
  
• Use writing to interpret, analyze and evaluate ideas
  
• Develop narrative, literary, expository, and technical writings to inform, explain,
  analyze, or entertain
  
• Collect, evaluate and organize information

The competition is open to students from Gloucester, Hampton, Newport News, Poquoson, Williamsburg, and York County.

One of the primary goals of this writing competition is to encourage young people to apply the lessons of history to the moral decisions they make today. Through studying the Holocaust, students explore the issues of moral courage as well as the dangers of prejudice, peer pressure, unthinking obedience to authority, and indifference. This competition provides students an opportunity to think and express themselves creatively about what they have learned.

Winners will be honored at the annual community Holocaust Remembrance program, Yom Hashoah, on Sunday, April 25, 2004 at the War Museum in Newport News, Time: 2:00 PM.

If you need assistance in locating resources, would like additional copies of the guidelines, or have any questions about this competition, please contact:

Rochelle Portnoy
Acting Executive Director, UJCVP
(757) 930-1422

Please submit entries no later than 4:30 pm, Tuesday, March 23, 2004 to:

The United Jewish Community of the Virginia Peninsula Holocaust Writing Competition
2700 Spring Road
Newport News, Virginia 23606

Entries will not be returned.

The Holocaust teaches us many lessons that are applicable today. Here is just one such lesson. Minority groups are not persecuted secretly. Evil-doers feel strongest when their deeds are acknowledged by all citizens: the non-persecuted as well as the victims. How did unharmed members of the community respond to Nazi persecution? Were they terrified? Horrified? Proactive? Invisible?

Select one of the prompts provided and write an essay or poem following the instructions for each.

1. All entries must be typed and doubled-spaced.
2. Entries may be up to three pages in length.
3. Submit two complete copies of your essay or poem.
4. Include a cover page with the following information on both copies:

   a)  The division you are entering, Middle School or High School, and the category you are entering, Essay or Poetry
   b)  Your name, home telephone number and address
   c)  Grade, teacher's name and school

5. To ensure impartial judging, do not put your name or other identifying information on any page other than the cover page. Staple all pages together in the upper left hand corner with the cover page first.
6. Cite all sources quoted.
7. One entry per student.

Judging will be based on the following criteria:

1. Work is original, cohesive and insightful.
2. There is proper use of language including grammar and spelling.
3. Instructions and guidelines are followed.

Failure to comply with these instructions may result in disqualification.

ALL COMPETITION ENTRIES MUST BE RECEIVED BY:
4:30 PM, TUESDAY, MARCH 23, 2004

Please submit entries to:

The United Jewish Community of the Virginia Peninsula
Holocaust Writing Competition
2700 Spring Road
Newport News, Virginia 23606

Choose one (1) of the following for your entry:

1)
In 1942, Pavel Friedman, a 21-year-old Czechoslovakian was deported from his home in Prague to Theresienstadt, a ghetto used as a transit camp. He wrote the poem The Butterfly while in Theresienstadt.

THE BUTTERFLY

The last, the very last,
So richly, brightly, dazzlingly yellow.
Perhaps if the sun's tears would sing against a white stone...

Such, such a yellow
Is carried lightly way up high
It went away I' m sure because it wished to
kiss the world goodbye.

For seven weeks I've lived in here,
Penned up inside this ghetto
but I have found my people here
The dandelions call to me
And the white chestnut candles in the court.
Only I never saw another butterfly.

That butterfly was the last one,
Butterflies don' t live in here,
In the ghetto.

You are the last butterfly. Describe your thoughts and memories as you leave the ghetto.

THE NUREMBERG AND RELATED LAWS

The exclusion of Jews from German society was gradual but unrelenting. Between 1933 and 1939, the Nazis enacted over 400 laws to define, segregate, and impoverish German Jews.

Nazi anti-Jewish policies were first directed against state employees, but they soon broadened in scope. On April 7, 1933, Jewish civil servants were dismissed from their jobs. By the end of that year, Jewish editors had been ousted, and Jewish authors expelled from writers' guilds. By 1934, Jewish students and professors were being excluded from higher education.

In 1935, the Nazis enacted the Nuremberg Laws which formalized the government action previously taken against the Jews. The first of these laws, The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor, prohibited marriages between Jews and Germans (and which also authoritatively made a distinction between these two classifications). It also restricted the employment of Germans by Jews. The second, the Reich Citizenship Law, stripped Jews of their German citizenship.

The Nazis began closing down the remaining Jewish businesses in April, 1938. In a process called "Aryanization, " Jewish businessmen were forced to sell out to Germans, usually at below-market prices. Within a year, four out of five Jewish businesses had been transferred to "Aryan" hands.

The pace of exclusionary decrees intensified beginning in mid-1938:

July 25: Jewish physicians are banned from practicing.
August 17: Jewish men are required to adopt the middle name "Israel, " and Jewish women the middle name "Sara."
September 27: Jewish lawyers are disbarred.
September 28: Jewish nurses are dismissed.
October 15: Jewish passports are marked with the letter J, for Jude (German for "Jew").
November 12: All remaining Jewish businesses are closed, and Jewish shop managers are dismissed.
November 15: Jewish pupils are expelled from public schools.

Pastor Martin Niemoeller

You have been living in a community that systematically discriminates against its citizens. Describe the consequences of either preventive action involvement or inaction as a response to what is happening. Show evidence of research in this response .

www2.warnerbros.com/intothearmsofstrangers/
www.holocaust-trc.org/
www.facing.org/
www.holocaustcommission.org/
www.holocaust-history.org/
www.ushmm.org/
www.wiesenthal.com/
www.yad-vashem.org.il/

Holocaust Related Books

• Prospective entrants should consult the catalog in their school library.
• Key to abbreviations
  Books suitable for: Middle school students (MS)    High school students (HS)

Books available at eight public libraries:

Gloucester Co.(G)
Hampton (H),
Newport News (NN)
Poquoson (P),
York County (Y),
Williamsburg Regional (W)
Christopher Newport University (CN)
College of William and Mary (WM)

Poetry

Holocaust Poetry , compiled by Hilda Schiff, 1995. MS, HS. [NN, P, W, Y]

History

Rescuers (General)

Block, Gay and Malka Drucker. Rescuers: Portraits of Moral Courage , 1992. HS. [H, NN, WM]

Fogelman, Eva. Conscience and Courage: Rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust , 1994. HS. [H, NN, W, CN, WM]

Gottfried, Ted. Heroes of the Holocaust , 2001. MS. [NN, W, Y]

Meltzer, Milton. Rescue: The Story of How Gentiles Saved Jews in the Holocaust , 1988. MS, HS. [H, NN, Y, W]

Rittner, Carol and Sondra Myers, eds. The Courage to Care: Rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust , 1986. MS, HS. [H, NN, CN, WM].

To Life: Stories of Courage and Survival: Told by Hampton Roads Holocaust Survivors, Liberators and Rescuers , 2002. MS, HS. [Available in all public school libraries.]

Rescuers (Specific individuals or groups)

Goldberger, Leo, ed. The Rescue of the Danish Jews: Moral Courage under Stress , 1987. HS. [CN] The Danish people rescue their Jewish citizens from deportation to killing centers.

Hallie, Philip. Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed: The Story of the Village of Le Chambon , 1979. HS. [H, W, CN, WM] French rescuers of Jews under Nazi occupation.

Keneally, Thomas. Schindler's List , 1982. HS. [All eight libraries.] The story of the German businessman, Oskar Schindler, told in the form of a true-to-life novel.

Levine, Ellen. Darkness over Denmark: Danish Resistance and the Rescue of the Jews , 2002. MS. [G, H, NN, P, W]

Matas, Carol. Greater than Angels , 1998. MS. [NN, P, W] Fiction. Anna, a teenaged Jewish refugee, tells how she and others were saved by the people of Le Chambon.

Nicholson, Michael. Raoul Wallenberg:The Swedish Diplomat Who Saved 100,000 Jews from the Holocaust before Mysteriously Disappearing , 1989. MS, HS. [H, NN, W]

Opdyke, Irene Gut. In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer , 1999. MS, HS. [G, NN, P, W, Y, WM] The story of a Polish rescuer.

Smith, Danny. Lost Hero: Raoul Wallenberg's Quest to Save the Jews of Hungary , 2001. HS. [Y, WM]