Our eighth-grade scholars have taken an interest in the history, literature, and drama of the holocaust and its impact on young people. At the moment, the students are reading The Diary of Anne Frank in Language Arts. In Drama they are exploring the experiences of young survivors by reading the play No Fading Star by Celeste Raspanti, to be followed by a reading (and perhaps a performance of the play I Never Saw Another Butterfly, also by Celeste Raspanti. The play is the tale of the Terezin concentration camp, near Prague. Here is the synopsis from the Dramatic Publishing Company:
“Over 15,000 Jewish children passed through Terezin, and only about a hundred were still alive when Terezin was liberated at the end of the war. One of the survivors, Raja, having lived through it all, teaching the children when there was nothing to teach with, helping to give them hope when there was little enough reason for hope, creating a little world of laughter, of flowers and butterflies behind the barbed wire, tells the true story of the children. It’s her play and it’s theirs. There were no butterflies at Terezin, of course, but for the children, butterflies became a symbol of defiance, making it possible for them to live on and play happily while waiting to be transported.”
Much of the dialog in I Never Saw Another Butterfly is taken from actual prose and poems written by those doomed children. Please be prepared to discuss this tragic time in our planet’s history with your children, as they come to grips with man’s inhumanity to man.
