Butterfly Project

Currently in Junior English we are reading Night. For those who have yet to read this memoir, it is about Elie Wiesel who was an Auschwitz survivor. There are a couple things my students are doing while reading this book. First, they are writing dialectical journals, meaning they are using this as a tool for analyzing the text. Secondly, they are diving deeper into the meaning of indifference, and how one becomes indifferent. Most importantly, is becoming indifferent dangerous.

If you have the time to read an short speech Wiesel gave years ago at the White House go to this website http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/wiesel.htm

Anyway, the one lesson I wanted to teach is about the Terezin Ghetto. Why? This ghetto is a bit different than the others-- Terezin was unique. This was a fake city of safety, a ruse to fool the world of the life of Jews in the ghettos. Two hundred thousand persons passed through, fifteen thousand children. Only 93 of those children were known to survive. Poems and art were hidden at Terezin in mattresses and stuffed in cracks between the walls. These were recovered after the war and made into a book called ...I Never Saw Another Butterfly... The title came from one of the poems that a child wrote.

This one project I wanted my juniors to do was read and analyze the poems from the book. I was reading the poems this weekend, and it is so hard to grasp what these children endured. If you have a chance I suggest to google the title of the book to read a couple of the poems.