Moving on to National History Day is a very big deal. Students spend almost half the year preparing for their school’s History Day, and if they are lucky enough to move up the ladder of projects, their chances to move on become smaller and smaller.

Junior Tasha Holtman was fortunate enough to move on to National History Day for the fourth time. She received 2nd in 2010 and 3rd in 2012.  Next year, as a senior, Holtman will not be able to participate in National History Day.

“I’ve been working on my project since October,” said Holtman. However she chose her topic, the Kindertransports, in the summer of last year. The Kindertransports was the “informal name of a series of rescue efforts which brought thousands of refugee Jewish children to Great Britain from Nazi Germany between 1938 and 1940,” according to ushmm.org, a site for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

When asked how she feels about about moving on, she responded, “I’m really excited but at the same time it’s really stressful.” Holtman worked as an individual on her research paper, the only category that doesn’t allow a group project.

Many students who move on to the next section of History Day revise their projects many times. Holtman did lots of revisions. “I wanted to do the best job I possibly could, and the only way to make it better is to revise [the research paper]. A project can always be better,” said Holtman. She wanted to honor the people she interviewed for the paper as well.
Holtman was able to interview two Kindertransport children, one who escaped from Austria, and one from Germany, as well as a son of a Kindertransport child from Czechoslovakia.