Today, January 27th, is Holocaust Remembrance Day, which, in 2025, marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in Poland. To commemorate the occasion the Clemens Library invited students & staff to partake in the creation of a butterfly memorial. This was done in conjunction with the Butterfly Project, an educational initiative that utilizes the butterfly as a symbol to each about the Holocaust with particular attention on commemorating the significant number of children who perished.
Participants in the Butterfly Project engage in creating and decorating butterflies as a means of honoring these lost children while also exploring themes of hope, transformation, and resilience. The project draws inspiration from a poem composed by a young prisoner in a concentration camp, where butterflies symbolize freedom and beauty amidst horrific circumstances.
"The Butterfly" by Pavel Friedmann
Theresienstadt, 4 June 1942
He was the last. Truly the last.
Such yellowness was bitter and blinding
Like the sun's tear shattered on stone.
That was his true colour.
And how easily he climbed, and how high,
Certainly, climbing, he wanted
to kiss the last of my world.
I have been here seven weeks,
'Ghettoized.'
Who loved me have found me,
Daisies call to me,
And the branches also of the white chestnut in the yard.
But I haven't seen a butterfly here.
That last one was the last one.
There are no butterflies, here, in the ghetto.