Anne Frank and beyond

We went to the Holocaust Museum for a homeschool day today.  They do such an amazing job!  Today our rotation included:

The Brave Butterflies.  The project is based on this poem

The Butterfly by Pavel Friedman 

“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.

The goal of the project was to collect 1.5 million handcrafted butterflies - one for each child that died in the Holocaust.  We were each given a diary page or story or poem of a different child that had died.  Then we were asked to write questions on the back.  Then we colored our butterflies.  I cried.  Here was Eric's child, his questions, and butterfly.

Then we watched a movie on the short life of Anne Frank.  I cried.  

Then we walked through a room with different people from the Holocaust.  Each panel had a different person, and his perspective on the situation.  We went over perpetrator, victim, bystander, and rescuer.  Then each child was given a passport with a person.  He was to go look at that person and answer some questions.  Then he was to determine which category his person fell into.  Eric's was a rescuer.  

Then we heard from a guest speaker named Edward Francell.  His family left France shortly before the Germans invaded.  They were able to get out because his grandfather was an American, therefore his mother had dual citizenship.  Several members of his family were killed or taken to labor camps.  

Here he was telling Eric that he is an only child also.  Eric thought that was pretty neat.  ;)