TORONTO — Members of the Toronto Jewish community are contributing to an initiative by the Holocaust Museum in Houston to collect 1.5 million handmade butterflies to commemorate the Jewish children who were killed in the Holocaust.
Andrea Lacroix and Tamar Lewin showcasing their handmade butterflies which will be sent to the Holocaust Museum in Houston, Texas for their butterfly exhibit in 2012.
The museum will use the butterflies to create an exhibition scheduled to open in 2012.
When Justine Apple, co-ordinator for Kulanu Toronto – a Hillel-affiliated Jewish social group for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, transexual, and intersexed people – heard about the project, she wanted to be a part of it.
Late last month, Apple connected with Carson Phillips, an educator with the Holocaust Centre of Toronto, who introduced the project to Apple.
Together, they created a Yom Hashoah event called Poetry and Arts Night.
Apple said about a dozen people gathered at the Wolfond Centre for Jewish Campus Life to learn about the artwork created by children in the Terezin concentration camp and to create their own pieces of art to honour the child Holocaust victims.
“Carson started the whole evening by actually telling us about the children in Theresienstadt and then he gave us all these poetry books he has from the Holocaust centre that contain poems by kids,”Apple said.
“He gave us an opportunity to quietly read through some poems in the book. We picked poems that resonated with us that we would read out loud. We shared the poetry with each other and the room was extremely quiet.”
She added that the poetry helped inspire the participants.
“When I asked them to tell me about their butterfly, a simplest looking butterfly had so much meaning behind it. They were very beautiful and personal and sometimes sad. The whole evening was very moving.”
Apple said she learned from Phillips that the museum chose to collect butterflies because much of the artwork created by children in the concentration camps contained butterflies.
“The symbolism behind the butterflies is that it’s a symbol of freedom, a symbol of the future, a symbol of moving into a happier time… a coming out of the hell of the Holocaust.”
Apple said that the museum asked that glitter or food, such as macaroni or candy, not be used in making the butterflies, but people were free to use any other material including pipe cleaners, fake flower petals, tissue paper, construction paper, and magazine and newspaper cutouts.
Michelle Delverde, the principal of a Jewish supplementary school for the Danforth Jewish Circle, an egalitarian Jewish community group, said she learned about the project from Apple and was eager to get her students involved.
Delverde said that the biggest challenge was adjusting the project to make it appropriate for all the students from preschool age to bnei mitzvah age.
“The youngest kids were taught about the program from the framework of being free to learn about being Jewish and the freedom to be Jewish,” Delverde said.
“They were also taught that we are making butterflies today to make the world remember the importance of being free to be Jewish and how a long time ago, not so long ago when your grandparents were little kids, it was not okay or safe to be Jewish in some parts of the world.”
She said that they made 50 butterflies for the museum’s exhibit.
As of last summer, the Holocaust Museum in Houston collected more than 400,000 butterflies.
Apple said that while schools and synagogues are likely to become involved in a project such as this, she hopes Kulanu Toronto’s involvement will inspire other gay organizations to do their part.
“I thought it would be unique and special for us to spearhead this effort and hopefully inspire other gay groups, not just in Toronto, but Montreal, Ottawa and Vancouver, to start the same thing.”
Apple added that during the Holocaust, homosexuals were also among those targeted and murdered by the Nazis.
“They had to wear pink triangles [to identify them as being gay]. There is so much documentation about that, so many documentaries that have been filmed about that and every Holocaust Education Week there is always talk about gay people and how they were discriminated against.”
Kulanu, which organizes events and programs throughout the year, is hosting a lecture titled “Twice blessed: The joys, not oys, of being Jewish and LBGT,” at Congregation Darchei Noam on June 7.
For more information, contact Apple at [email protected].