Butterfly Project

The Butterfly The last, the very last,

So richly, brightly, dazzling 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 1942 Pavel Friedman

Place of Origin:

Terezin Concentration Camp

• A total of 15,000 children under the age of fifteen passed through the Terezin Concentration Camp between the years 1942-1944; less than 100 survived.

• The ghetto of Terezin (Theresienstadt), located in the hills outside Prague, was an unusual concentration camp in that it was created to cover up the Nazi genocide of the Jews. Billed as the "Fuhrer's gift to the Jews", this "model ghetto" was the site of a Red Cross inspection visit in 1944.

• With its high proportion of artists and intellectuals, culture flourished in the ghetto - alongside starvation, disease, and constant dread of transports to the death camps of the east. Teachers taught children in secret and used scraps of paper and other materials to give art lessons.

• Every one of its inhabitants was condemned in advance to die.

• These innocent and honest depictions allow us to see through the eyes of the children what life was like in the ghetto.

• The children's poems and drawings, revealing maturity beyond their years, are haunting reminders of what no child should ever have to see. They are on permanent display at the Washington D.C. Holocaust Museum. Some are also published in the book titled, I Never Saw Another Butterfly. The book is available in the CHS library.

• In these poems and pictures drawn by the young inmates of Terezin, we see the daily misery of these uprooted children, as well as their courage and optimism, their hopes and fears.

The Artwork

The Butterfly Project click on image below

Your objective: You will read a poem by a child of Terezin, and using archetypal colors, design a butterfly to honor your child.

Archetypal Colors

• Red: blood, sacrifice, passion; disorder.

Archetypal Colors

• Green: growth, hope, fertility.

Archetypal Colors

• Blue: highly positive; secure; tranquil; spiritual purity.

Archetypal Colors

• Black: darkness, chaos, mystery, the unknown, death, wisdom, evil, melancholy.

Archetypal Colors

• White: light, purity, innocence, timelessness; [negative of death, terror, supernatural]

Archetypal Colors

• Yellow: enlightenment, wisdom.

Archetypal Colors

• Purple: royalty, wealth

Archetypal Colors • Orange: caution, warning

Archetypal Colors • Pink: sweetness, innocence, romance, femininity

Examples from the Butterfly Project in Houston