Thursday, October 22, 2009

The Butterfly Project

I belong to the St. John's Guild of Embroiderers'. The summer challenge 2009 was to embroider a butterfly. 1,500,00 children perished in the Holocaust and in an effort to remember them, the Holocaust Museum, Houston, Texas, is collecting 1.5 million handmade butterflies. The butterflies are scheduled for exhibit during Spring 2012. The following poem was the inspiration for making butterflies. The picture below shows some of the butterflies made by members of the guild.

The Butterfly
The last, the vey 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 ure
because itwished
to kiss the world good-bye.

For seven week 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 January 7, 1921.
Deported to the Terezin Concentration Camp on April 26, 1942.
Died in Aushchwitz on September 29, 1944.

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