Elaine Loft, Staff Writer
Each year The Derryfield School chooses a member of the senior class to receive an award in honor of Simeon Kass, who survived the Holocaust as a young boy. The Boelig Family, who had two children graduate from Derryfield, were friends with Kass late in his life. They created the Simeon Kass award in 2007 to honor Kass, his life experiences, and his passions. “Uncle Sim,” as he was known to the Boelig children, was a Jewish Parisian whose mother and two young brothers all died at Auschwitz.
The award is presented in the fall to a Derryfield senior who demonstrates outstanding writing skills, an appreciation of other cultures, a burning inquisitiveness, and the disposition to take a position and challenge perceived opinions. The 2024 recipient, announced on October 22 during the school’s weekly Community Meeting, is Ipeksu Yucel ‘25.
Yucel’s essay, entitled “Through the Window,” discusses an experience she had while visiting relatives in Turkey when she was six years old. While riding in the backseat of an old Renault, she observed a young girl, a Syrian refugee, who was in the middle of the street, attempting to sell cigarette packets and tissues to stopped motorists. Yucel reflects back on the effects of her brief encounter with that stranger.
“It’s strange, the way a moment can fracture your understanding of the world. In that car, under that unforgiving sky, I didn’t yet know how to articulate the feeling that had settled in my chest. All I knew was that something about the world had shifted. I had been naïve, too young to understand the mechanics of injustice, but old enough to recognize its shadow when I saw it.
The world is cruel and unfair. That seemed to be the best conclusion I could come to at all. But in accepting that, am I too the problem? Is this belief that the way that things are, are for some inexplicable reason or another, the way that things are meant to be, far too passive? I’ve decided I refuse to accept that as an answer. Because I believe only one part of that statement is true. The world is cruel. But not because the world inherently is, but because we have decided that is how it will be.
But if we close our eyes to the suffering, if we dismiss the faces we pass by as mere shadows, then we become complicit. And so, this is the conclusion I’ve come to: the world is indeed cruel, but it does not have to be. It is only in the silence of our indifference, that we bury the very essence of what it means to be human.”
According to the Boeligs, Kass carried around a notebook everywhere he went, taking notes and writing down phrases – he was always learning, and was always inquisitive. Although he lost much of his family, what the Boeligs remember are his resilience and love of life. Kass honored the power of education to push back the darkness of prejudice, fear and brutality. He believed that knowledge, when combined with a burning curiosity and compassion, illuminates the most beautiful things in this world. So too did the founders of Derryfield.
