Peperzak Middle School honors its 101-year-old namesake and Holocaust survivor with a dedication ceremony for a sapling from Anne Frank’s tree

About a hundred people gathered at Peperzak Middle School Saturday to commemorate a new addition to its exterior: a horse chestnut sapling standing a few feet tall, upheld from gusts of wind by wooden stakes and protected by a fenced barrier.

But it’s not just any sapling.

Though it may look young, its history spans decades and involves one of the most influential voices from the Holocaust, Anne Frank.

Peperzak Middle School is the 18th school in the U.S. to receive a sapling germinated from the tree that Frank could see from the home where she hid from the Nazis during their occupation of the Netherlands. The school’s namesake, 101-year-old local Holocaust survivor Carla Peperzak, attended synagogue and Hebrew school in Amsterdam with Anne’s older sister, Margot Frank.

“It’s wonderful; very, very special, and I’m very, very happy and grateful,” Peperzak said at Saturday’s ceremony. “And the interesting thing is, this is No. 18 in the United States. In Hebrew, the No. 18 stands for life, ‘chai,’ and so it’s a very lucky number.”

As Jewish populations were being persecuted, in 1942 the Frank family went into hiding. Using a gifted diary from her 13th birthday, Anne wrote about her experience in the cramped quarters and her longing for freedom during the two years her family spent in hiding.

To escape from the monotony of the indoors, she found solace looking at the scenery outside her window, which included a large chestnut tree she referenced three times in her diary.

“From my favorite spot on the floor I look up at the blue sky and the bare chestnut tree, on whose branches droplets shine, and at the seagulls and other birds as they glide like silver,” Anne wrote on Feb. 23, 1944. “As long as this exists, I thought, and I may live to see it, this sunshine, the cloudless skies, while this lasts I cannot be sad.”

Though the tree was destroyed by a storm in 2010, it lives on through its saplings thanks to a project from the Anne Frank Center USA. These have been planted in sites of significance, such as the Capitol in Washington, D.C., and the site of the 9/11 attacks in New York City.

Last year, the Anne Frank Center USA announced it had been working with Vallonia Nursery in Indiana to nurture more of these saplings and give them to educational establishments across the United States. The focus on schools honors the work of Anne Frank’s father, Otto Frank, who was the only member of his family to survive the Holocaust.

“The Anne Frank House was founded by Mr. Otto Frank’s vision for education of young people,” said Gillian Perry, an adviser to the Anne Frank Center USA attending the event. “He had this great vision that education was the most important thing to counteract the prejudice, discrimination and hatred that had killed his own daughters.”

Establishments are carefully selected for the program. The board for the Anne Frank Center USA chose Peperzak Middle School with a unanimous vote.

“I’m honored to be a part of this dedication of the Anne Frank sapling, and with the spirit of Anne Frank coursing through its branches reminding us to empathize and care for others, just as Carla did, and to challenge all forms of prejudice,” Perry said.

The tree was coincidentally planted in the ground on May 12, Otto Frank’s birthday.

Attending the ceremony was about half of Peperzak’s extended family, many of whom remember seeing the original tree. Just 30 years prior, she took her family to Amsterdam on her 45th wedding anniversary and visited the Anne Frank House. However, she was hesitant to tell her full story for years, and most of her children didn’t know the extent until her granddaughter Megan Knowles asked her to speak to her class in 1993.

“We were reading the book, and I asked if she would come speak because she knew Anne Frank. That’s all I thought she was going to talk about,” Knowles said. “Literally, as she was sharing to the class was the first time I learned.”

Peperazak was born in Amsterdam in 1923 to a Jewish family. She graduated high school in 1940, the same year the Nazis invaded the Netherlands. The next year, she joined the Dutch resistance, committing daring acts of bravery that include disguising herself as a German nurse to rescue her cousin from a train bound to a transit camp, hiding her relatives in a farmhouse in the countryside and even creating fake identification papers and ration cards for other Jews.

To honor her history, Peperzak’s granddaughter Katherin Peperzak made sure to pass the last name along to her children. Her son, Paxton, just began reading Anne Frank’s diary last week.

“We were fortunate enough to be able to go see the documentary showing at the Seattle Jewish film club, and afterwards, there were all these people coming up to us, telling us their own stories,” Kaherin said. “Now those stories are coming to light, and we are so lucky to have it documented so well.”

Peperzak Middle School Principal Andre Wicks said the school emphasizes education about the Holocaust, so to have a physical tie to Anne Frank along with the history of their namesake is powerful.

“Our school mantra is all day, every day, becoming my best self, and that verb ‘becoming’ is something that we talk explicitly about all the time,” Wicks said. “But to have an Anne Frank sapling moving, breathing, growing at our campus and to have that represent what we’re trying to achieve in life is pretty special.”