Holocaust Butterfly Project Encourages Compassion

It is always nice to see our children develop a sense of compassion and caring for others. If you are looking for a project that will encourage just that, consider being part of the butterfly project from the Holocaust Museum of Houston. May the Holocaust Museum gather more butterflies than they have set out to collect and may we all band together to show the goodness in humankind…with the hope to someday obliterate man’s inhumanity to man.

In an effort to remember the victims of the Holocaust, the Holocaust Museum is collecting 1.5 million handmade butterflies. These butterflies will symbolize the 15,000 innocent children that passed through the Terezin Concentration Camp during the years 1942-1944 as well as the 1,500,000 innocent children that perished during the Holocaust.

Butterfly Requirements:

Butterflies should be no larger than 8×10 inches. Butterflies may be of any medium the artist chooses, but one-dimensional submissions are preferred. Glitter should not be used.

Send butterflies by June 30, 2008, with the following information included:

Your name/Organization or School/Your address/Your email address/Total number of butterflies sent If possible email a photograph of your butterflies to butterflyproject@hmh.org

Mail your butterflies to:

Holocaust Museum Houston

Education Department

5401 Caroline St.

Houston, TX 77004

Web Sites of Interest

www.hmh.org (Holocaust Museum Houston)

"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 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.

Pavel Friedman, April 6, 1942

(Born in Prague, 1921/Deported to Terezin, 1942/Died in Auschwitz, 1944)