Fifth graders from Plantation display art project honoring children from the Holocaust

Plantation, Florida – One of history’s darkest times was honored with art from the fifth-grade class at Tropical Elementary School in Plantation on Wednesday.

In order to represent one of the 1.5 million children murdered during the Holocaust, each fifth grader painted a butterfly.

“I picked a medium-sized one with little nubs as antennas. I think it’s fragile but really pretty,” fifth-grader Alexa Newell said.

The butterflies are affixed to a permanent memorial in the fifth-grade hallway at Tropical Elementary and now each year new fifth graders will add to the memorial. “We are teaching our students about the lessons of the Holocaust the acceptance of differences and creating empathy and compassion among them.” Holocaust lead teacher, Adina Baseman said.

As students are taught about the atrocities of the Holocaust, it’s part of an effort at schools nationwide. “We really need to teach empathy and compassion and kindness and I think this is a perfect way the symbol of a butterfly a delicate is a delicate insect and a short lifespan and the fact that these butterflies represent the children of the Holocaust whose lives were cut short,” art teacher, Elizabeth Hodges said.

The students even got to meet a Holocaust survivor. “It felt very exciting to meet one. But then her story was very sad,” fifth-grader Pharrell Johnson said.