This week is Holocaust Remembrance Week as established by Texas Senate Bill 1828. Students at The Varnett Public School East did their part in remembering the holocaust victims and survivors.
International Holocaust Remembrance Day was January 27, which is the date that Auschwitz was liberated by Allied troops.
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the World War II genocide of the European Jews. Between 1941 and 1945, across German-occupied Europe, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews, around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population.
East campus sixth graders presented a memorial for Janusz Korczak, a Polish Jewish educator and children's author. After spending many years working as director of an orphanage in Warsaw, Mr. Korczak repeatedly refused sanctuary and stayed with his orphans when the entire population of the institution was sent by the Nazis from the Ghetto to the Treblinka extermination camp in 1942. He died in the camp.
Fifth-graders posted paper butterflies on the wall in remembrance of the Jews who were victims of the holocaust. Listen to a fifth-grade student describe the display in this video.