I Never Saw Another Butterfly

Plot

Terezin Concentration Camp held, between 1942 and 1944, fifteen thousand children under the age of fifteen years old, for various lengths of time, before the children were carted out to other camps to die. A few teachers came in with sparse quantities of art supplies, and they used art "lessons" as a way of offering art therapy. "I Never Saw Another Butterfly" is a representation of those surviving pictures, which are now housed at the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC, USA. Illustrating the pictures, as it were, are collections of poetry and prose, and excerpts from a few journals.
I wish I spoke Dutch (?) so that I could read contributor Helga Weissova's "Das Kunstlerische Schaffen" -- I'd like to see what else she has to say. I wish that Soña Spitzovã, who drew my favorite of the drawings ("Starlight In A Dark Room," page 53) hadn't died in Auschwitz before she was even fifteen years old.

The things these children saw! They noticed the trains, the transports. Helga Weissova did a painting of a woman, JUDE star on her clothing, whose hair was searched for lice. They also saw flowers in jelly jars on tables. They remembered their own beds.

I think that art exists, in part, to speak when we are no longer able to.

This book was purchased from my amazon.com wishlist. I think I'll be getting a copy for a friend who's in school to be an art therapist; I think she'll get a lot out of it.