Essay Contest Trip to Palo Alto's Dutch Sister City Illuminates the Power of the Past

By Monica Schreiber

Some people dismiss Sister Cities as a relic of the past, a hold-over from a post-World War II world when Sister Cities were created to build bridges across fractured borders. A June 2023 teen trip to Palo Alto’s Dutch Sister City served as a reminder that the past is not to be dismissed. Indeed, the past is often what matters the most.

The one-week trip to Enschede was the culmination of a cross-border high school essay contest we launched last year to honor a little-known Dutch Resistance leader from Enschede, Pastor Leendert Overduin, who saved hundreds of Jewish children and their families during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands in World War II, then later helped the children of imprisoned Nazi collaborators.

The trip brought together essay contest winners from a four-way Sister and Sibling City network that included Enschede’s German Sister City, Münster, and Palo Alto’s Sibling City, Bloomington, Indiana. Looking at the group of students through the lens of World War II, these were the descendants of the invaded, the invaders, and the liberators, who gathered in Enschede to learn about the horrors of the past and contemplate the promises of the future.
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Here are two of my biggest history-focused takeaways from the week-long trip:

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