by Stacey Abell
for The Beacon
Since 2005, January 27 has been designated by UNESCO as Holocaust Remembrance Day. This date marks the anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau by Soviet troops on January 27, 1945.
Perhaps no person is as readily associated with the unfathomable loss and tragedy of this genocide than a bright, expressive German-Dutch teenager of Jewish heritage.
During the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, Anne Frank kept a diary during the two years she was in hiding with her family. Despite her confined living space, Anne's creativity soared as she observed those around her and explored her innermost thoughts and longings. In 1944, her hiding place in "the Annex" was discovered; Anne died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945, only two months before the liberation of the Netherlands.
Seven short years after her death, Time magazine would hail her diary as "one of the most moving stories that anyone, anywhere, has managed to tell about World War II."
This spring, the University of Iowa will receive one of only a handful of saplings grown from the beloved chestnut tree described by Anne Frank in her diary. To commemorate this occasion, The Iowa Youth Writing Project, the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, and the University of Iowa German Department are sponsoring a writing contest for junior high and high school students.
Contest winners and honorable mentions for the Anne Frank Sapling Prize will be published in a professionally designed anthology. Some winners will be selected to read at the planting of the Anne Frank sapling on April 29 at the northeast corner of the University of Iowa Pentacrest.
The contest is open to Iowa junior high and high school students. To enter, please respond by 11:59 p.m. on Feb. 27, 2022, to the following prompt:
Write about a time when you felt isolated or trapped. How did you work through that time, and what did you learn from the experience?
Responses may be written in essay or poem form; length limit in either genre is five double-spaced pages. Email submissions (in editable form, such as .docx, .doc, .rtf) to iywp@uiowa.edu. Please indicate in your email's subject line whether you are in junior high or high school (JH/HS), and whether your submission is an essay or a poem. Remember to include your name and email address on the document. This information will be concealed from contest judges.