Butterfly Project

I found this project on another blog. I copied the picture (blog owner gave permission) and her address so that everyone who reads my blog can click on it and possibly join the effort. If you read her entire listing, you see that all the directions to participate are given and if you don't want to participate through her blog you can go directly to the Houston Holocaust Museum. There is a link for educators and since I am one, I decided to click on it. I teach a huge unit on the Holocaust in the spring and I am adding this to it. My class will definitely be participating in this project. I am so glad that I happened upon this blog and am thankful that others are just as interested in stopping the hate as I am.



http://twodressesstudio.blogspot.com/2010/08/butterfly-effect-open-is-calling-you.html

"The Butterfly Project" hosted by The Holocaust Museum Houston in Texas, USA. Their mission as follows:
The Holocaust Museum Houston is dedicated to educating people about the Holocaust, remembering the 6 million Jews and other innocent victims and honoring the survivors' legacy. Using the lessons of the Holocaust and other genocides, we teach the dangers of hatred, prejudice and apathy. And the tag line following it reads:
Stop Hate. Starting Here.
The Butterfly Project mandate is to remember the 1,500,000 innocent children who perished as a result of the Holocaust by collecting 1.5 million handmade butterflies.


In Spring 2013, these butterflies will then become a breath-taking exhibition to serve as a memory of this event.


Can you imagine? 1.5 million children translated into 1.5 million butterflies....? If you wondering why a butterfly, the project is based on this poem -


I Never Saw Another 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
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
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.
Butterflies don’t live in here, in the ghetto.

Written by Pavel Friedman, June 4, 1942

Born in Prague on Jan. 7, 1921.
Deported to the Terezin Concentration Camp on April 26, 1942.
Died in Aushchwitz on Sept. 29, 1944.