After reading the book Twenty and Ten, a story by Claire Bishop about Jewish children seeking refuge in a French Catholic school during WWII, our literature circle made butterflies to send to the Holocaust Museum in Houston to be included in their Butterfly Project Exhibit. The Butterfly Project is based on poetry and writings by children who perished in the Holocaust. Here is an excerpt:
The Butterfly
The last, the very last,
So richly, brightly, dazzlingly yellow.
Perhaps if the sun’s tears would sing against a white stone....
Such, such a yellow
Such, such a yellow
Is carried lightly ’way up high.
It went away
I’m sure because it wished to kiss the world good-bye.
For seven weeks I’ve lived in here,
For seven weeks I’ve lived in here,
Penned up inside this ghetto.
But I have found what I love here.
The dandelions call to me
And the white chestnut branches in the court.
Only I never saw another butterfly.
That butterfly was the last one.
That butterfly was the last one.
Butterflies don’t live in here, in the ghetto.
by Pavel Friedman, June 4, 1942
Born in Prague on January 7, 1921.Deported to the Terezin Concentration Camp on April 26, 1942. Died in Aushchwitz on September 29, 1944.
Born in Prague on January 7, 1921.Deported to the Terezin Concentration Camp on April 26, 1942. Died in Aushchwitz on September 29, 1944.
“I Never Saw Another Butterfly”
Children’s Drawings and Poems from Terezin Concentration Camp 1942–1944.
Children’s Drawings and Poems from Terezin Concentration Camp 1942–1944.
By Hana Volavkova (Editor)
More than 12,000 children under the age of 15 passed through the Terezin Concentration Camp between the years 1942-1944. More than 90 percent perished during the Holocaust. In these poems and pictures drawn by the young inmates of Terezin, we see the daily misery of these uprooted children, as well as their courage and optimism, their hopes and fears.
For more information about The Butterfly Project, click here: http://www.hmh.org/minisite/butterfly/index.html
