Photo: Don MacMonagle
Seventeen-year-old Esther Tyther, Farness, Castlemaine, a Presentation Milltown transition year student, won first place in the Marie Elmes Prize for Holocaust Studies (literature category) with her original piece The Haunting Whispers of Life and Death.
The prize is named in honour of the only Irish person to receive the Righteous Among the Nations award. Marie Elisabeth Jean Elmes was born in May 1908, in Ballintemple, Cork and attended Trinity College, where she studied modern languages.
During the Spanish Civil War, she worked at a children’s hospital in Almería and later joined 500,000 refugees crossing into France.
During World War II, while based in the south of France, she rescued over 400 children from deportation to concentration and death camps. Her efforts began on August 11, 1942, when she and her colleagues saved nine children from the first group being sent to Auschwitz.
From that point until October 1942, Marie and her team rescued a total of 427 children, transporting them from Rivesaltes Camp in the boot of her car to safe houses, or helping them escape France entirely.
She is the first Irish person to be acknowledged (posthumously) as Righteous Among The Nations by Yad Vashem, an award bestowed on non-Jewish people who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.
Senior cycle students are invited each year to submit an essay or artistic response about any facet of the Holocaust that they would like to explore and raise awareness about.
Esther also had work published recently in Quarks: Open Your Eyes Shut as part of the prestigious Edna O’Brien Young Writers’ Award.
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