Tilly Baldwin receives Holocaust Center contest award

Cheney Middle School eighth-grader Tilly Baldwin received an honorable mention in the middle-school art category of the Seattle Holocaust Center for Humanity's 2018 Writing, Art and Film Contest.

According to a July 9 news release, Baldwin's piece, "entitled 'Alone,' is a powerful work that represents the way that bystanders hurt others by not speaking up." She will be honored in a community reception on July 15, taking place at the Henry and Sandra Friedman Holocaust Center for Humanity from 10 a.m. – noon. Her work will be displayed at the Holocaust Center, online, at events and in publications throughout the year.

"'Alone' represents the way that bystanders are hurting other people by not acting out or speaking," Baldwin wrote on the center's website describing her work. "As a sea of people flow past a clearly depressed person, not a single one of the thousands walking past stop to see if they are alright or need help. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum states how even if an observer says or does nothing, they are still encouraging the behavior. This is also meant to represent how humanity will follow the same path as their peers and not do what makes them an individual. People need to break away from normality."

This year, 1032 students from a total of 75 different schools entered the Center's Writing, Art, and Film Contest.

"When the entries pour in from students around the state, from rural and urban public schools, parochial schools, students who are home schooled - really all over - we see that students strive and genuinely intend to improve our world," Holocaust Center Director of Education Ilana Cone Kennedy said in the release. "It's very inspiring, and tells us that our work at the Center is as important today as it's ever been."

Connecting lessons of the Holocaust to a broad range of relevant themes for our time, from bullying to social justice, the Holocaust Center for Humanity teaches students to become engaged citizens, awakens empathy, and challenges them to recognize and speak out against bigotry and prejudice.

The Holocaust Center was founded in 1989. During the 2017-2018 school year, 28,000 students of all ages engaged in Holocaust education through the center.