You may remember that last week was the tenth anniversary of my first meeting with Tim in our former favorite online chat room. My very first day online, my very first visit to that chat room, I met a woman named Tay from Southern California. It’s so great when two people meet and instantly connect–especially when time proves that the connection is real and enduring. Back then, Tay worked with an HIV/AIDS assistance organization. Our shared experiences taking care of and losing people we loved to AIDS was part of our immediate bond.
Later, Tay changed careers and began teaching middle school. I knew she’d be a dynamic teacher. If I had kids, she’s exactly the kind of teacher I’d want them to have. She’ll never feel like teaching is a matter of forcing knowledge into a kid’s head and then asking the kid to spit it back. A true teacher knows that for a few hours each day, you have the soul of a human being in your care–a human being who is much more than just a “learn this/behave this way” duty.
Effective teaching engages a child’s mind, heart, and body. Such is the goal of The Butterfly Project of the Houston Holocaust Museum. The project was inspired by a poem written by Pavel Friedman. Born in Prague, Friedman was deported to the Terezin Concentration Camp on April 26, 1942, and died in Aushchwitz on September 29, 1944.
A total of 1.5 million children died in the Holocaust. The Houston Holocaust Museum hopes to collect 1.5 million butterflies to honor each of the victims. Tay’s students wanted to be part of this effort, so they learned about the children of Terezin. They made butterflies in their honor. They hung their butterflies in their classroom and shared stories with their fellow students about each child represented by an individual butterfly. Then they learned the fate of those children. If a child died, his or her butterfly was cut down.
I doubt there were many butterflies still floating over their classroom by the end of their project. In all, 15,000 children under the age of 15 passed through Terezin. Less than 100 survived.
By engaging their hands with glue and paper, feathers and sequins, colored markers and beads, ribbon and fabric, pipe cleaners and stickers, Tay took the hearts and minds of a group of Los Angeles children on a journey to the past to honor the lives and mourn the losses of children of the Holocaust. They remembered those who should never be forgotten.
I was honored that Tay sent the butterflies to me to watch over until she came to Houston. When Rhonda–who Tay and I initially also met in that same chat room all those years ago–found out that Tay would be going to the Houston Holocaust Museum, and that Tom and I would join her, to hand over the students’ butterflies, she found a particularly poignant way to say thank you to Tay and her students.
Rhonda’s parents are Holocaust survivors. They and other Houston area survivors included some of their memories and experiences in the book The Album: Shadows of Memory. Rhonda took a copy of the book to her parents and some of the other contributors and had them inscribe it to Tay’s students as a gift. Then she met us at the museum and accompanied us through a tour of the exhibits, sharing a part of herself and her family’s history with us.
It’s hard for me to admit that I have deliberately not gone to the Houston Holocaust Museum, just as I didn’t go to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. I know about the atrocities. Studying the history and literature of both World Wars was a huge part of my academic education, but also my education at home. My father was a WWII vet and a teacher of U.S. history and U.S. military history. I was an infant in my mother’s arms when she toured Dachau Concentration Camp, an experience that had a profound effect on her and which became part of my personal history as I was growing up.
When people say such horrors could never happen again, I usually shake my head and say, “We are always this close to it happening again,” and indicate a minute distance with my fingers. Every time we dehumanize a group of people, every time we close our eyes and ears to injustice and inhumanity, every time we refuse to do anything about genocide anywhere, we decrease that distance a little more.
I’ve always had to be cautious with how much information I take in about the Holocaust. Yesterday, Rhonda helped me understand that if a gift can be taken from this part of our past, it’s knowledge of the amazing will of people to survive, of our resilience, our determination to endure and to emerge from such an experience still able to live with joy, to love, to give life to new generations.
And Tay and her students helped me remember that our greatest hope lies with the willingness of children to be much fairer, much wiser, much kinder than some of the adults who’ve come before them.
Whatever our anguish, however deep, hope is its butterfly.
For more photos, click on the picture, then go up to the gallery.
(Some of the photos have notes. A photo can also be clicked on to enlarge if you need to see it in more detail.)
Loads of admiration for Rhonda, her parents, and Tay, and Tay’s students. And thank you, for writing this down, Becky. Don’t I sound composed? : )
Just when you think that there is just nothing out there to save the people from themselves… you hear about something like this, and it makes you believe that there is a little hope for mankind after all. I;m weepy now
I learned about Terezin by reading Herman Wouk’s War and Remembrance, which to this day is still one of my favorite books. I will never forget how the book ended:
The end of war lies in remembrance.
It is so tragic that most people don’t remember…
WOW, Becky!! There’s nothing more to say… just WOW!!!
What a profoundly effective and affecting program this is! It’s just astounding how recently all of this happened, and how many similar atrocities have been allowed to happen, even in light of our knowledge of the Holocaust.
The co-chair of my thesis committee, Larry Sutin, edited and published his parents’ Holocaust memoir a decade ago. If you’re ever on the lookout for an uplifting survival story (colored with tragedy though it is) … here you are!
I was an infant in my mother’s arms when she toured Dachau Concentration Camp, an experience that had a profound effect on her and which became part of my personal history as I was growing up.
I was four months pregnant when I went to Majdanek (in Lublin, PL; I won’t post a link because they are all potentially triggering/upsetting) last year. It is something I have a difficult time thinking about without being overwhelmed.
i think the holocaust should be taught as a separate course in every high school. it’s usually just lumped in with history, but it deserves so much more than that. i tried to talk one of my h.s. teachers into doing a section on that, but he said there was just way too much to cover in such a short time frame.
as you said, of course it could happen again. if the upcoming generations aren’t aware of the horror that was, how can it be prevented?
anyway, beautiful entry about the butterflies. 🙂
I usually have a hard time with stuff from the holocaust, too. Cruelty–to whatever, be it another human being or an animal (I can’t bear to read about what Michael Vick is accused of with the dog fighting stuff) is something I have a hard time dealing with. Several years ago I was briefly watching some show, and some college age chick was on, saying that the holocaust was just a fabrication, that it didn’t really happen. That’s about the time I changed the channel. Stupidity like that is something else I have a problem with.
*tears*
This is absolutely beautiful; and I’m truly sorry that I couldn’t go with you guys. I cannot tell you how honored I feel for being given the chance to know a lot of these survivors, and hear their stories. After everything they went through, they are the most loving group of people I have ever known. Which, to me at least, speaks volumes about thier person.
And you write this with so much compassion, that it makes me kind-of love you even more.
Thank you for putting into words (and photos) what it took me a couple of days to do, but only half as well.
Thank you for letting me be part of this.
Thank you and Tom for being the people you are. I love you both.
another great resource for more info
It is amazing that you guys went to the museum on Wednesday; I came in for a training we held for law enforcement at the museum on Thursday.
It is a profound and important place – with so many wonderful people who make sure to challenge us all to be witnesses. Every one of us has to learn to stand up and speak out against injustice and inhumanity if we are to have any hope at all.
Another great resource for educators and others interested in learning more about the Holocaust is the Echoes & Reflections site. It is a curriculum developed by the Anti-Defamation League, the Shoah Foundation and Yad Vashim (the Holocaust museum and memorial in Israel). The online site includes lessons and video testimonials, and can be accessed at:
http://echoesandreflections.org/.
roberta
“Every time we dehumanize a group of people, every time we close our eyes and ears to injustice and inhumanity, every time we refuse to do anything about genocide anywhere, we decrease that distance a little more.”
Thank you for sharing this – it’s a truly wonderful project and anything that means our history will never be forgotten has to be a good idea. An ideal teacher, indeed.
Mom called me last night. She read both our blog entries and said we both got her and Dad choked up. She and Dad really appreciated what we both had to say.
Thanks for letting me know. =)