The Sixth Annual Holocaust
Art and Writing Contest

To Change Our World:
Legacy of Liberation

In the spring of 1945, the war in Europe entered its final phase.  As the Allied forces moved into territory once held by Germany, they encountered horrific evidence of Nazi genocide.  In concentration and death camps, in slave labor camps and on death marches, they discovered mountains of bodies and emaciated survivors barely clinging to life.  An unbelievable act of genocide became an unimaginable reality.  Only later would it be called the Holocaust.

This photo is of the concentration camp Dachau, established by the Nazis in March 1933, less than two months after Adolf Hitler became chancellor.  On April 29, 1945, the camp, then numbering some 60,000 prisoners, was liberated by the Seventh Army of the United States armed forces.  No one knows exactly how many people died during the years the camp operated.
 
The photograph on this poster captures the prisoners’ joy at liberation.  The survivors and the soldiers who freed them were forever changed by their experiences. Many vowed to tell their stories so that the world would remember and learn.  For sixty years they have been the voices of the millions who perished.  Through their witness they have sought to shape a world where all human beings are respected and where all children are loved and protected.

In his 1986 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, world-renowned author Elie Wiesel, who survived Auschwitz and Buchenwald, spoke explicitly of the connection between past and present and of the special responsibility which he and other survivors feel for our world.  Professor Wiesel said:

“As long as one dissident is in prison, our freedom will not be true.  As long as one child is hungry, our lives are filled with anguish and shame.  What all these victims need above all is to know that they are not alone; that we are not forgetting them, that when their voices are stifled we shall lend them ours, that while their freedom depends on ours, the quality of our freedom depends on theirs. . . . Our lives no longer belong to us alone; they belong to all those who need us desperately.”

Yet today, dissidents remain in prison; children go hungry; human rights are violated.  The voice of witness initiated by the survivors and their liberators sixty years ago must now continue through your voice.

Middle School Competition

First Place Art: Monique Becker
Second Place Art: Jacqueline Parker

First Place Essay: Gabriella Duva
Second Place Essay: Rebecca Freeman

First Place Poem: Kim Ngai
Second Place Poem: Emily Henriksson

High School Competition

First Place Art: Marissa Moonilal
First Place Art: Steven Vander Sluis

First Place Essay: Irina Dykhne
Second Place Essay: Ella Fishman

First Place Poem: Matthew Adam White
Second Place Poem: Melissa Jones