19th Annual Holocaust Art and Writing Contest Cover Page
Turning Retentivity to Strength
Living with Courage, Resilience and Hope
Participating schools may submit a total of three entries (1 entry per pupil) in any combination of the following categories: art, film, poetry, or prose.
Students will be eligible to win a start prize award of $400 in each category. Educators and schools will also be eligible to win a outset prize of $200 each.
Starting time-place student winners in the United States, their parents/guardians, and teachers will exist invited to participate in an expense-paid report trip June 20-24, 2022, to visit the Holocaust Museum LA, the Museum of Tolerance, the Japanese American National Museum, and other sites in Los Angeles, as well equally to run into with members of The 1939 Order, a community of Holocaust survivors, descendants, and friends.
Funding permitting, this yr's winning participants will be joined by those from the 2020 and 2021 contests, including get-go-place students living outside of the United States. In addition, starting time-place student entries volition be posted on Chapman University's competition website. Delight note that the report trip will not occur if COVID-19 restrictions on travel and social distancing are withal in place.
Students awarded 2d prize in each category will receive $200 and their sponsoring educator and school will receive $100 each.
For those who endured the Holocaust, the prospect of an Allied victory and state of war's end sometimes seemed and so distant equally to be virtually unimaginable. Each day was a struggle to maintain promise in the ever-irresolute circumstances of their lives.
When liberation finally came, those who had managed to survive experienced a tidal wave of conflicting emotions. Leon Leyson, the youngest person on Oskar Schindler'southward famous 'List,' recounted: "After the soldier left, the gates swung open. I was in shock. We all were. We had gone from years of imprisonment to freedom. I felt confused, weak, and ecstatic all at once." Leon was not even so sixteen years one-time.
Liberation did non magically return survivors to their prewar lives. Many discovered they were unwanted past their one-time homelands. Others constitute themselves in camps far distant from their homes with no style to return. And nevertheless others knew their homes had been destroyed by war and that their families were missing or murdered. Relief organizations and governments faced an unprecedented humanitarian crisis as they sought to respond to the hundreds of thousands of people in desperate need. Their efforts to provide fifty-fifty the well-nigh basic requirements of food, shelter, and medical attention floundered at showtime.
For those who had survived, simply finding apparel to supercede their detested prisoner uniforms or filthy rags was oftentimes impossible. The physical challenges they faced were more than matched by the mental and emotional ones of coming to terms with the loss of so many people they loved. Equally a nurse was taking her apparel to be burned, Gerda Weissmann could think only of rescuing the photos of her parents and blood brother she had kept subconscious in her boot. They were the just tangible link to her honey family.
Afterwards liberation, survivors also began to realize how securely they had been affected past what they had experienced. When Elie Wiesel looked in a mirror for the first time, he was stunned past what he saw: "From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me. The look in his optics every bit he gazed at me has never left me."
Immature survivors like Leon, Gerda, and Elie had to rediscover who they had been before the war, who they were now, and who they wanted to become. They often had to practise so while learning a new language and catching upwards on lost years of instruction. They wrestled with the question of how they could remember those they had lost without living in the by. How could they make memory a source of strength rather than a burden? They had survived; now they must alive. To do so would require the resilience to brainstorm over again and a conclusion to honor the dead past living life with backbone and promise.
one. Select and view i full-length survivor or rescuer testimony from any of the post-obit:
- Chapman University'due south Holocaust Art & Writing Contest website, featuring video testimonies from the drove of the USC Shoah Foundation — The Institute for Visual History and Education at Chapman.edu/contest-testimonies
- Due south Carolina Council on the Holocaust website at scholocaustcouncil.org/survivor.php
- The 1939 Society website at the1939society.org
- USC Shoah Foundation - The Plant for Visual History and Pedagogy'due south YouTube channel at Youtube.com/uscshoahfoundation ("Full-Length Testimonies" playlists but)
* Lists of testimonies that are 1 to two hours in length are available on the last folio of the Educator Guide.
2. Equally you mind to the survivor's testimony and reverberate on the stories they tell, write downward a specific word, phrase, or sentence that references a memory of their experience during the Holocaust that was a source of courage, resilience, or hope for that person as they sought to engage in life later the war and/or liberation.
Please notation the timecode from the video testimony where the specific discussion, phrase, or sentence occurs.
3. As the person now entrusted with this individual'south memory, through your creativity in art, verse, prose, or film, explore this give-and-take, phrase, or judgement every bit central to the survivor's story, your knowledge of the Holocaust, and your own understanding of what it means to alive life with backbone, resilience, and promise.
Source: https://www.chapman.edu/research/institutes-and-centers/holocaust-education/holocaust-art-and-writing-contest/index.aspx