Writing contest for teens recalls the Holocaust

Area high school students are again asked to help the community remember the Holocaust.

For a fifth year, a creative writing contest is part of the Spokane Community Observance of the Holocaust.

This year’s theme is “And You Shall Tell Your Children,” based on the Passover tradition of Jews telling their children about their people’s exodus from Egypt as if they had actually been there.

Contest entrants are asked to compose a story or poem of 500 to 1,000 words in the voice of a child survivor of the Holocaust, explaining what they would want their own children to learn from their experiences.

(Background information on children during the Holocaust is available at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum website, www.ushmm.org; search keyword “children.”)

Entries should be double-spaced in Microsoft Word format, with a cover page giving the writer’s name, phone number, e-mail address, school name and grade level. E-mail as an attachment to neveragain-spokane@comcast.net before midnight March 13.

The winner will read his or her composition at the Spokane Community Observance of the Holocaust service April 28 at Temple Beth Shalom and will receive a $500 scholarship and a keepsake commemorating the achievement. The winning entry also will be published in The Spokesman-Review.

The second-place winner will receive a $250 scholarship, and the third-place winner a $100 scholarship.

For more details, see the Facebook page Never Again Spokane.