Torch of Sorrow
1996 May Family National Art Contest
Junior High School Division First Place
Beth Kolb, "Torch of Sorrow," woodcut.
Stillwater Junior High School, Stillwater, Minnesota.
"The Olympic Torch represents the aspirations of humanity, yet the Nazis had already started the liquidation of Jews, Gypsies, handicapped, and others. The first time that the Olympic torch was used, ironically, was the same year the Olympics were held in Berlin. It shows that an innocent symbol of competition, a simple flame, can become a blaze and kill millions of people and change humanity forever.
I don't think that governments should interfere with something such as the Olympics, but since Hitler and the Nazi party had already declared that Jewish people could not participate and had already voiced plans of racial cleansing, I believe that it would have been right to boycott the Olympics. Why should we have supported the Nazi Olympics when they had not only discriminated against citizens of their own country but had made plans of mass execution?
My woodcut shows a Nazi holding the Olympic torch in which innocent people, their faith and futures, are burning. This symbolizes the sufferings of the innocent people who fell into the hands of the Nazis and were used as slaves, tortured, and slaughtered solely for ideological reasons."
- Beth Kolb
No other prizes were awarded in this category.