Inspiration

Silk is one of the strongest natural fibres known to man. Just as silk in its purest form is indestructible, so the Silk Butterfly Project aims to provide each participant with an everlasting connection to the memory of a past atrocity that almost destroyed the existence of European Jewry.

When Swiss-American psychiatrist Dr Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, visited the children’s barracks at the Maidenek concentration camp in 1946, she discovered hundreds of butterflies etched on the walls. Some had been engraved with pebbles and others scratched with fingernails; but all of them represented a message which took Kübler-Ross 25 years of working with dying patients to fully comprehend.

In spite of the awareness that their deaths of their physical bodies were imminent, the children of Maidenek saw the butterflies as representing their eternal souls, which would enable them to live on forever. Then and now, butterflies represent vibrant natural beauty. At the same time, their delicate wings and short existences, remind us that life is fragile. Vicki Mervis, founder and coordinator of the Silk Butterfly Project aims to infuse Jewish boys and girls of Bar and Batmitzvah age with the confidence and humanitarianism to make the world a better place.