News Story by Cassy Benefield | FāVS News
One of only 21 Anne Frank tree saplings in the United States was dedicated at the Carla Peperzak Middle School on Saturday (June 21) afternoon. What took five years to plan and execute, culminated in a 20-minute ceremony that shed light on its significance in Spokane, its roots in Frank’s journal and its meaning to Peperzak.
“It is not lost on us the significance of being a recipient of an Anne Frank sapling,” said Andre Wicks, principal of the school and who opened the event. “This tree represents life. This tree represents resilience. It represents hope and it represents growth.”
Nearly 100 people attended, including Peperzak, several of her family members, school district leaders, teachers, students, members of the public and more.
“It’s amazing. It’s too bad the weather is like this, but I’m very grateful,” Peperzak said as she referred to the blustery, cloudy day of the event. Not letting the weather, however, damper the smile and joy expressed on her face.
The main reason she was grateful, she said, was because Anne Frank’s story should be known, and now her name will be associated with the telling of Frank’s story, with the tree growing alongside the school named after her.
Peperzak, a Holocaust survivor, fought in the Dutch resistance as a teenager. She helped find hiding places for nearly 40 friends and family during that time, helping them with fake IDs, food and health care.
“It is impossible to put into words and to explain what it really felt like to live during that time,” Peperzak wrote in “Keys of My Life,” which FāVS News reported on in 2019.
“To lose your friends one by one, your close relatives, not to know if they were in hiding, in camps or killed,” she wrote. “Towards the end of the war we were really hungry and we were scared all the time.”
To unite her experience now with that of her friend Margo Frank and her little sister Anne Frank was very meaningful, Peperzak said.
“It’s amazing I’m still around,” she said, referring to her 101 years.
Peperzak’s synagogue leader, Rabbi Tamar Malino, was also in attendance.
“It’s a tremendous way of honoring her legacy, and what she’s given to the world, and what she gives to this community and this school and this place and a tree is such a beautiful symbol for ongoing life and all the gifts that it gives,” Malino said.
The sapling comes from the Anne Frank Center USA Sapling Project, which began in 2009 when cuttings from the original horse chestnut tree featured in Anne Frank’s diary were nurtured, grown and distributed across the world.
“The ancient horse chestnut tree that stood proudly at … 263 Prinsengracht was a source of great comfort to the teenage Anne Frank while she was hiding for her life from her Nazi aggressors,” said Gillian Walnes Perry, Anne Frank USA distinguished expert advisor who spoke at the event.
The tree that had lived through “so much Dutch history,” Perry said, was destroyed in a violent storm in 2010.
“Miraculously, that very tree still lives,” she said.
The sapling planted at Carla Peperzak Middle School actually took place on May 12, which was Otto Frank’s birthday — Anne Frank’s father. Otto Frank spent his post-Auschwitz years promoting the legacy of his daughter and her journal with his heart on the future and making the world a more compassionate place, Perry said.
“Frank often mentioned that his favorite saying was, ‘If the world should end tomorrow, I would still plant a tree today,’” she said.
Right before the official unveiling of the plaque, Perry bestowed a final wish upon the sapling.
“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, may it flourish for many years,” she said.
I love this so much!