SEATTLE TO RECEIVE ANNE FRANK TREE SAPLING! 

Our panel recommended your site for the following reasons:
Your beautiful existing park and your good design of the tree site, including a professional staff. Your excellent online resources to involve the community and the fact you have a Holocaust speakers bureau. Your message of tolerance was well received and compelling. The fact that a guman took the life of one person in 2006 after breaking into the offices of the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle and wounding five more, was a further compelling element.
- Yvonne Simons, Executive Director, Anne Frank Center USA, explaining why the Holocaust Center was selected as one of 11 recipients of an Anne Frank Tree sapling.

The Washington State Holocaust Education Resource Center was awarded one of 11 saplings taken from the aging Horse Chestnut tree that resides behind the Annex, where Anne Frank, her family and friends spent two years in hiding. The tree served as a source of inspiration for Anne during these long years in hiding. The Diary of Anne Frank is required reading for many schools in the state of Washington.

The Anne Frank Center in New York announced Friday the outcome of a process to award 11 saplings from the Anne Frank Tree in Amsterdam to organizations in the United States. To see the list of the institutions awarded: http://www.annefrank.com/fileadmin/saplings/saplings.php.

The Holocaust Center and Seattle Parks and Recreation partnered to create the proposal for Seattle to be the home of one of the saplings. The tree is designated to be planted in Volunteer Park.

The Holocaust Center was awarded the tree for its outstanding educational outreach on the subjects of the Holocaust, tolerance, and genocide, and its ability to connect the story of Anne Frank to the world today. The Holocaust Center does this through its many programs including Holocaust Teaching Trunks, a Speakers Bureau, writing and art contest, community programs, traveling exhibits, and teacher training. Three local child survivors from Holland, who are members of the Center’s Speakers Bureau, bring Anne Frank’s words to life when speaking to students who are reading her diary.

The shooting in 2006 at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle, in which the Holocaust Center is a tenant, stunned the city of Seattle, and the entire Pacific Northwest. No one expected such violence and hatred to surface in an area known for tolerance.

“The Anne Frank Tree Sapling is also meant to commemorate the overwhelming support and empathy that came from, and continues to come from, community groups across the spectrum of faiths, ethnicities, and economic status in the aftermath of the shooting,” explained Ilana Cone Kennedy, Director of Education at the Holocaust Center.

The Holocaust Center intends that this tree will remind the community that while intolerance exists in every community, each individual’s decisions and actions make a difference. story of surmounting “The Anne Frank Center hopes these trees around the country will tell a greater story of surmounting the obstacles of discrimination of any kind; that the sum story will be greater than the parts,” said Yvonne Simons, Executive Director of the Anne Frank Center, USA.

The tree will be arriving in Seattle from Amsterdam before the end of the year. e included: City Year Seattle/King County, Pride Foundation, Museum Without Walls, Seattle Archdiocese, Anti-Defamation League, Washington State Jewish Historical Society, DENSHO, Northwest African American Museum, Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle, Washington State Association of Multicultural Education.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/16/nyregion/16anne.html?_r=2&ref=nyregion
The above article in the New York Times gives more information on the saplings and where they are going.

Seattle Times Article, October 17, 2009.

JT News Article, October 29, 2009.

CNN.com Article,   April 30, 2010
An update on the saplings.  Click on "inspiration" to view the Holocaust Center's art contest winners featured in the article!