Butterfly Project

"Pain Strikes Sparks On Me, The Pain Of Terezin"

Fifteen beds. Fifteen charts with names,
Fifteen people without a family tree.
Fifteen bodies for whom torture is medicine and pills.
Beds over which crimson blood of ages spills.
Fifteen bodies that want to live here.
Thirty eyes seeking quietness.
Bald heads that gape from out of the prison.
The holines of suffering, which is none of my business.

The loveliness of the air, which day after day
Smells of strangeness and carbolic,
The nurses that carry thermometers
Mothers who grope after a smile.
Food is such a luxury here.
A long, long night, and a brief day.

But anyway, I don't want to leave
The lighted rooms and the burning cheeks,
Nurses who leave behind them only a shadow
To help the little sufferers.

I'd like to stay here, a small patient, 
Waiting the doctor's daily round,
Until  after a long, long time, I'd be well again.

Then I'd like to live
And go back home again.

Anonymous

I commented on: Dena's Blog, Mario's Blog, Sofia's Blog, Carter's Blog, and Dylan's Blog.

Holocaust AOW Impressions

      What I learned is that even though the Holocaust happened so long ago, there are still so many ways that the memories are living on. For example, in the article that I read this week, I learned about a Holocaust museum in LA that connects survivors of the Holocaust to high school students. The survivors tell their stories, and the students create art projects to express their thoughts. The program started because the teachers believe that students can express themselves more with art than with a conversation. The museum hangs their artwork up, so the memory of the Holocaust lives on.

      Another thing that I learned is the Nicholas Winton, who saved 670 Jewish children during the Holocaust, died recently at 106 years old. The rescue mission that he started became known as the Czech Kindertransport. He put these children, who were in the Czech Republic, on a boat, and then onto a train into London. He then used his resources to find foster homes for these children. There were 250 more children that were supposed to go to London, but unfortunately, their train got stopped on the way. Nicholas was a Nobel Prize nominee and was even knighted by the Queen in 2003.

Berlin Memorial Activity

What did you learn?

      In class this week, we learned a little bit about the laws that Adolf Hitler wrote against the Jews. There were over 400 of them put in place between 1933 and 1945. We learned that they came in bursts rather than a certain number every year. They started out with just taking away social activities, like "Jews cannot belong to a German Automobile Club", but over the years, they started to get a bit more severe. One of them was "Jews were not allowed to graduate". Their education was taken away. Some of the laws had a close resemblemce to American segregation in the 1900s. For example, "Jews not allowed to use swimming pools" or  "Jews only allowed to sit on benches marked with yellow color".

Why do you think this monument was built?

      I think this monument was built to remember the Holocaust. Monuments are almost always built to remember something or someone. It is important for people to learn about these historic events and tragedies, so that we can prevent them from happening again. We have not always been able to prevent them from happening in the past, and there have been other genocides in other countries, but we might be able to prevent them in the future.

What do you notice about the number of laws passed in certain years?

      I notice that the laws came in bursts instead of a certain number every single year. Obviously we didn't look at all 400 of the laws, but we looked at enough to get information about what they were like. The first year, 1933, there were many laws passed. But then in 1934, things slowed down a bit. In 1938, there was another burst, and again in 1942. In the years in between, there were laws passed, but not as many as 1933, 1938, or 1942.

Which restrictions do you think would have been the most trouble dealing with and why?

      I think that the most troubling law to deal with was the loss of jobs. If you were already poor, losing your job would make everything ten times worse. Your job is the only way you can get money for food and clothes for yourself and your family, and without it, you could starve.