If you or a family member were directly involved with or impacted by the Holocaust, please send us your story for publication.
We do not provide remuneration. Hopefully, knowing that you sharing the experiences and knowing that you are helping others to 'Never Forget' will be 'reward' enough. Write from your heart, as well as your mind. Email us by clicking on the image below. Thank you!
It is always nice to see our children develop a sense of compassion and caring for others. If you are looking for a project that will encourage just that, consider being part of the butterfly project from the Holocaust Museum of Houston. May the Holocaust Museum gather more butterflies than they have set out to collect and may we all band together to show the goodness in humankind...with the hope to someday obliterate man's inhumanity to man.
In an effort to remember the victims of the Holocaust, the Holocaust Museum is collecting 1.5 million handmade butterflies. These butterflies will symbolize the 15,000 innocent children that passed through the Terezin Concentration Camp during the years 1942-1944 as well as the 1,500,000 innocent children that perished during the Holocaust.
Butterfly Requirements:
Butterflies should be no larger than 8x10 inches. Butterflies may be of any medium the artist chooses, but one-dimensional submissions are preferred. Glitter should not be used.
Send butterflies by June 30, 2008, with the following information included:
Your name/Organization or School/Your address/Your email address/Total number of butterflies sent If possible email a photograph of your butterflies to butterflyproject@hmh.org
Mail your butterflies to:
Holocaust Museum Houston
Education Department
5401 Caroline St.
Houston, TX 77004
Web Sites of Interest
www.hmh.org (Holocaust Museum Houston)
"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 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.
Pavel Friedman, April 6, 1942
(Born in Prague, 1921/Deported to Terezin, 1942/Died in Auschwitz, 1944)
About the Author
Wendy Young, LMSW, BCD, is a child and family therapist in private practice in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Visit her at www.kidlutions.com Kidlutions: Solutions for Kids...because kids have problems, too!
The
Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center (IHMEC), located in
Skokie, Ill., draws visitors from around the state and the nation as
Illinois’ premiere resource for Holocaust remembrance and education
and human rights programming.
The
Museum is dedicated to preserving the legacy of the Holocaust by
honoring the memories of the six million Jews who were lost and by
teaching universal lessons that combat hatred, prejudice and
indifference. The museum fulfills its mission through the exhibition,
preservation and interpretation of its collections and through
education programs and initiatives that foster the promotion of human
rights and the elimination of genocide.
Housed
inside a 65,000 square-foot building designed by renowned Chicago
architect Stanley Tigerman, the museum’s structure represents a
three-part journey from dark to light, reflecting the journey of the
Jewish people from Nazi Germany, through the Holocaust, to today.
The
Museum’s Zev and Shifra Karkomi permanent exhibition features more
than 500 artifacts, documents and photographs from 1930s Europe and
beyond - including an original German rail car - that tell the story
of Jewish people and the many other minority groups persecuted in the
Holocaust.
The
Museum also features a Youth Exhibit, which uses interactive tools to
introduce children to the Holocaust. In addition, the Museum’s
Legacy of Absence Gallery focuses on modern genocides and serves as a
visual reminder of the atrocities still taking place around the
world.
The
Museum aims to fight prejudice by teaching future generations the
universal lessons of the Holocaust, and by empowering them to become
activists in the fight against unchallenged bigotry. To this end, the
Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center offers a series of
programs and travelling exhibitions aimed at drawing insights from
the Holocaust including the Voices
of Conscience lecture
series which brings international human rights figures to Illinois.
IHMEC
also serves as an educational center that teaches school children
about the importance of diversity and tolerance, carefully
integrating Darfur and other modern-day genocides into its curricula
for both teachers and their students. The Museum anticipates as many
as 250,000 student visitors each year.
Additionally,
the Museum’s Brill Resource Center provides guests with access to
the complete set of volumes on the Nuremberg Trials, Holocaust
encyclopedias, anthologies of the European ghettos and resistance
movements, and more than 2,000 testimonies of Midwest Holocaust
survivors as recorded by the Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual
History and Education, founded by Steven Spielberg.
IHMEC
is ideally situated in Skokie because of the Village’s connection
to the Holocaust. After the War, Skokie became an enclave for many
survivors and has still has a large Jewish community.
The
Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center is a project of the
Holocaust Memorial Foundation of Illinois. Founded by Holocaust
survivors in 1981, the organization is dedicated to teaching about
the Holocaust and the dangers of unchallenged hate. To learn more,
visit www.ilholocaustmuseum.org.
Kristallnacht - Horror On The Timeline Of World War 2 By Daniel M Delott
Thousands of Jewish homes and almost 8,000 Jewish shops were ransacked and destroyed during what is now known as Kristallnacht, or "Night of the Broken Glass", throughout Germany on the 9th and 10th of November 1938. Both the Sturmabteilung (SA) and the Schutzstaffel (SS) rampaged Germany with sledgehammers as they smashed windows, doors, and buildings belonging to or housing Jewish families and businesses. It
was during this part of the timeline of World War 2 that more than 30,000
Jewish men were taken away to concentration camps, more than 1,600 synagogues ransacked, and many Jews beaten to death in their homes and on the street.
Adolf Hitler, the mad man behind all events to cleanse Germany of the Jews and other unclean races, planned for this event to take place on Martin Luther's birthday. Hitler, at this point on the timeline of World War 2, was following the outline set forth by Luther in 1543 in his writing On the Jews and Their Lies. However, it is proclaimed that the whole incident was set in motion by Herschel Grynszpan, a 17-year-old Jew,
when he shot and killed a German Embassy staff member in Paris in retaliation
for the way his family suffered at the hands of the Nazis.
Almost two weeks prior to Kristallnacht, more than 15,000 Jews including Grynszpan's family, all originally from Poland were forcibly expelled from Germany by train and dumped at the Polish border. The world's reaction to Hitler's "bloody vengeance against the Jews" was not well received by any means. The United States recalled its German ambassador permanently immediately following the event.
Take a deep breath and check out Timeline For World War 2 for even more articles on this fascinating time in our world's history.