Masada launches children’s Holocaust memorial
Sydney’s Masada College has unveiled a memorial to the children who perished in the Holocaust.
Marika Weinberger
Guest of honour Marika Weinberger told the audience at the launch that one and a half million Jewish children died at the hands of the Nazis. The Sydney Jewish Museum is also exhibiting butterflies and she expressed her pleasure at the fact that Masada College has also supported this idea. Masada College believes it is the first Jewish Day School in Sydney with a Holocaust Memorial to the Children who perished in the Holocaust.
Next to the memorial is a plaque on which the poem The Butterfly by Pavel Friedman who died in Auschwitz in 1944. is engraved.
The memorial depicts the railway lines which took the children to their deaths and on the wooden tracks are engraved the children’s names which have been etched into the wood in reverse. When reflected in the wings of the butterfly the names can be read correctly. When viewed from different angles the colours change depending on the reflection and this gives the impression of something dynamic and changing rather than something static and dead. The aim is that every year the Year 10 Living Historian group will be able to add a butterfly in the name of their cohort.
This idea was initiated by Wendy Barel Principal of Masada College and was transformed into reality by Masada friend, Sherna Teperson with the aid of Head of Creative Arts, Daphne Flax. The memorial is open to the public.
