Quest for Tolerance Leads Students to Honors in N.Y.

After writing their own book, what next but a spot on “PrimeTime Live”?

Forty-three Woodrow Wilson High School seniors and their English teacher, Erin Gruwell, have touched down in the Big Apple.

For their efforts to promote tolerance, the Long Beach students received a national award Thursday from the Anne Frank Center USA in New York.

After an emotional send-off at Los Angeles International Airport, Gruwell, chaperons and the teenagers--who are among 150 students calling themselves Freedom Writers after the Freedom Riders civil rights activists of the 1960s--arrived Tuesday night in Manhattan and will return home early Sunday.

By trip’s end, the students hope to have built a bridge of cooperation with New York students encouraging religious and racial harmony in their neighborhoods. They will attend workshops on the subject taught by the nonprofit Anne Frank organization and they will meet New York Gov. George Pataki, Broadway stars and diplomats.

“It’s sort of overwhelming, and great,” said Meghan Perry, 17, one of the 43 students selected to make the trip as ambassadors for the larger group.

On Wednesday, Connie Chung of the television program “PrimeTime Live” started tailing the Freedom Writers for a piece to air nationally next month. They met Pataki and representatives from publishers Scholastic Inc. and Doubleday.

The students are hoping to find a publisher for their book, “An American Diary: Voices of an Undeclared War,” but intend to self-publish it if necessary. What proceeds they may earn will help them through college.

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On Thursday, the group was among five recipients of the Spirit of Anne Frank award, presented at the North American premiere of the Anne Frank Center’s new traveling exhibit.

Usually the center gives the award to individuals, but an exception was made this year for the Freedom Writers.

Awards were presented by actress Linda Lavin, one of the stars of the current Broadway show about the Amsterdam teenager whose diary, written during the Holocaust, was published after her concentration camp death.

The Wilson students saw the play, and later dined with the Netherlands ambassador to the United Nations and Holland’s consul general in New York.

The center says it gives the awards to people who, like Miep Gies, the woman who helped hide Anne Frank’s family and recovered her diary, “have actively worked to make the world a better place [and] exemplify the ideals and courage that Anne Frank’s story brings to light.”

During the week, Freedom Writers will also take part in Jewish religious services and workshops on how to encourage tolerance. About 20 New York high school students joined them for the workshops, and the Freedom Writers shared excerpts of their book. They also met with author Peter Maas, whose book on the Bosnian conflict will be read in class by the Wilson High students.

With the $1,000 that came with their award, the Freedom Writers intend to buy copies of “Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl” for a New York public school.

It was about four years ago that this adventure began for Gruwell and her English students. After learning that they did not know what the Holocaust was, the teacher launched them on a reading program whose overarching theme would be tolerance.

Since then, the students have met many writers whose books they have read, among them “Schindler’s List” author Thomas Keneally. They have become pen pals and friends with the woman who hid the Frank family, even bringing her out to visit.

Gruwell had the students write their own stories as part of correspondence with a Bosnian teenage diarist. Why, she thought, couldn’t my students also write their own book?

Many of the Freedom Writers live with poverty, racism, family violence, learning disabilities and other hardships.

At the very least, unburdening themselves might be therapeutic, and doing it anonymously would make it safe, Gruwell reasoned. The students came to hope that their book might comfort other teenagers feeling alone with similar grievances.

Besides reaching out to fellow youths, they have forged deep friendships with Holocaust survivors. One of them, Gerda Seifer, is among chaperons on the New York trip.

In the Los Angeles airport terminal before their takeoff, she looked as excited about the journey as the students whose arms draped around her.