The Butterfly Project

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
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.

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.

Butterflies are a fun part of summer, aren't they? Watching them flit from flower to flower - or watching your crafty kids try to catch them (usually unsuccessfully) is tons of fun. While playing around on the Web one day, I ran across this Website about some children who didn't get to enjoy the butterflies.

The holocaust was a terrible, TERRIBLE event. In movies and even during history class at school, we'd always see photos of the victims, usually skin and bones, but in all that time, I don't recall seeing a single picture of a child - save maybe one. I could be living in my little rose colored glass bubble of blissful ignorance, but I had no clue that so many children died in the holocaust.

Holocaust Museum Houston is collecting butterflies made by children across the United States until June 30, 2012. The "I Never Saw Another Butterfly" project is aiming to collect as many handmade arts-and-craft butterflies from children of all ages, for a display of 1.5 million butterflies at the museum. Rules for the project are listed here.

Feel free to do your own butterfly however you want, but I've linked below a few tutorials that I thought were beautiful:

* Megity's Handmade: Butterfly Chandelier
* Happy Mommy's Coffee Filter Butterflies
* Disney Family Fun's Butterfly craft page

All of these are great crafts for any age (the mobile would probably be better for more advanced crafters, but hey, let the kids give it a shot!) and would be great submissions for The Butterfly Project.