Georgia 5th Grader Leads ‘Butterfly Project’ To Honor Child Holocaust Victims
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
Fifth-grader Rose Calvillo has a goal to commemorate the 1.5 million children who died during the Holocaust. She wants to see 1.5 million handmade butterflies decorating the walls of her Elementary School in Dalton, Georgia.
Calvillo and her classmates are learning about World War II and the Holocaust.
“It’s important that we remember the Holocaust, so that it doesn’t happen again. We need to remember everyone who died, but I think it’s really important to remember the children who died,” she told the Suwannee Democrat.
During her studies, Calvillo became aware of the Holocaust Museum Houston’s Butterfly Project, a worldwide effort to collect 1.5 million butterflies in honor of the children killed during the Holocaust. Soon after, she decided her school should have its own butterfly project.
The idea is inspired by a poem called “The Butterfly,” written by Jewish poet Pavel Friedman. He wrote the poem at age 21 while a prisoner in the Theresienstadt concentration camp, and ultimately died at Auschwitz.
In addition to the students making their own butterflies, Varnell has ordered 36 ceramic butterflies from the Butterfly Project to decorate. Each one comes with a biography of a child killed during the Holocaust.
Calvillo wrote a letter asking nearby schools to create their own butterflies and send them to Varnell.
“If we forget about it, if we ignore it, it’s like they died twice,” Calvillo says of Holocaust victims.
Contact Haley Cohen at [email protected]
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
