“More than 75 years after the young Czech poet Pavel Friedmann famously penned a farewell poem to "the very last" butterfly at the Terezin Concentration Camp, the children of the world have answered Friedmann with "the largest migration of butterflies ever seen” The students of our school with teachers Dunja Mikulaj and Monika Vrtarić Vuk marked The Holocaust Remembrance Day by creating an art installation, consisting of butterflies, created by students of grades 3, 7 and 8 individually. The techniques applied for this activity were watercolours, crayons and collage. Later, at a special presentation, a group of 3rd graders recited the poem The Butterfly. Our 8th graders learnt about the Holocaust within history lessons: with their teacher Snježana Odak Hrkač they had a workshop where they were split into four groups. They had an assignment to do research about four young people, victims of the Holocaust: Anne Frank, Petr Ginz, Lea Deutsch and Avraham Koplowitz.

​They thought about how they might have felt and wrote monologues – what would have they said if they had been able to talk to us? After the workshop, four pupils of grade 8 presented themselves as Anne, Lea, Petr and Avraham and shared their thoughts at a special presentation with other students, their teachers and the headmaster, who all gathered to pay tribute to all innocent victims of war.

​They also listened to the song Dona, Dona by Rachel Hyman, and watched the film The Last Flight of Petr Ginz. Everything we heard was deeply emotional. We wanted our students not only to learn about the facts but also to have them try their best to see through those people’s eyes. The aim of this activity was to strengthen student social and civic competence. The outputs of this activity are the art installation of butterflies, educational posters and monologues in Croatian and English, published on the project website.