Never forget! Holocaust Stamps Project still teaching vital lessons

 

Jamie Droste, left, and Charlotte Sheer, in front of The Cube.

This second column that I wrote on the latest development with the Holocaust Stamps Project at the Foxboro Regional Charter School in Foxboro, MA, was published in the March 1, 2024, edition of Jewish Rhode Island of Providence. It includes a short interview with the project’s founder, retired teacher Charlotte Sheer, who started the project in 2009, when she was a fifth-grade teacher at the school.
The project’s message --- and the thoughts of Charlotte Sheer --- are even more relevant today than they were 15 years ago when the project started in light of the strong resurgence of antisemitism today.
Here's the link to the column as it appears on the newspaper’s website: https://www.jewishrhody.com/stories/at-15-the-holocaust-stamps-project-continues-to-teach-tolerance-and-respect,59283?
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Fifteen years ago, a fifth-grade teacher at a charter school had a vision for bringing the unimaginable scope of something so horrific as the Holocaust across to her fifth-grade students. That teacher was Charlotte Sheer and that school was the Foxboro Regional Charter School in Foxboro, MA. 
Sheer's students were reading author Lois Lowry's children's book about the Holocaust, "Number the Stars,” which tells the story of a Danish girl helping to smuggle Jewish families out of German-occupied Denmark in World War II.
During discussions in class of that book and the Holocaust, Sheer wanted to devise a way of bringing the enormity of the Shoah home to the class. In an interview I did with Sheer for a story in 2017, she shared this insight into how the class discussions blossomed into the Holocaust Stamps Project:
“With a number so unfathomable, I challenged the class to try collecting one postage stamp for every person who perished in the Holocaust. Why stamps? They’re small and accessible. The intent was to use stamps as a symbol for something of value being discarded, as millions of people’s lives were thrown away by the Nazis.
“By June that year (2009), they’d struggled to amass about 25,000 stamps. The children were just beginning to sense the enormity of the number 11,000,000. Soon it developed into the Holocaust Stamps Project, and it became a regular component of the school’s Community Service Learning program.”
The project eventually took off and soon the entire K-12 school enthusiastically got behind the goal of collecting 11 million stamps, 6 million to represent the number of Jews slaughtered by the Nazis and 5 million to represent those of other nationalities and ethnicities targeted by Adolf Hitler's minions.
Eventually, stamps poured in from 48 states and the District of Columbia and 29 countries, and in 2017, the project surpassed 11 million stamps.
The next big announcement related to the project came when the project and its 18 poignant collages, featuring people and moments from the Holocaust fashioned from some of the stamps collected, were chosen for a permanent exhibit at the American Philatelic Center in Bellefonte, Pa. “A Philatelic Memorial of the Holocaust” featuring the Holocaust Stamps, after numerous delays due to the pandemic, finally  opened to the public last June.
That was thought to be the last development related to the project, but as it turned out, that wasn't, as the late radio commentator Paul Harvey was known for saying, the rest of the story.
That took place Jan. 26, the day before the observance of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, at the school when a 5-foot-by 3-foot plastic structure called The Cube was unveiled in the charter school’s middle school lobby.
Filled with 1.5 million stamps, the exhibit, Sheer said, memorializes the 1.5 million children killed during the Holocaust.
In a brief email interview, I discussed the significance of the latest exhibit with Sheer:
Question: Was the vision of The Cube display in the lobby honoring the memories of the 1.5 million children killed in the Holocaust always the plan or was that planned after the main exhibit found its permanent home in Pennsylvania?
Answer: “Long before the American Philatelic Society offered permanent stewardship of the Holocaust Stamps Project (HSP) at their headquarters in Bellefonte, Pa., (former student life adviser) Jamie Droste and I had discussed and drafted several ideas for how to display the 11 million stamps. When we considered the weight of, and space needed to house, just 1 million of the paper pieces, it became clear that an arrangement of cube-shaped containers would be the most practical. Our guesstimate that each one would need to be about 3-by-3 by 3 feet was close to the dimensions of The Cube recently unveiled at the charter school.”
Question: The Cube seems to be a most fitting and appropriate tribute to the project. What are you feeling now that this apparently final tribute has taken place? 
Answer: “Jamie and I shared a vision for the installation of a display within the school where 1.5 million stamps would honor the memories of every Jewish child-victim of Hitler’s evil intentions. Seeing The Cube strategically placed in the middle school lobby, where students, staff, parents, and visitors would notice it daily, gives me hope that its presence will raise awareness and generate questions as springboards for conversations not only about the history, but also the importance of acceptance and tolerance.”
Question: Could you share your thoughts or reflections at this moment in time some 15 years after you started this project, and comment on its importance and relevance at this time when antisemitism has reached, at times, frightening new levels?
Answer: “The Holocaust Stamps Project began in my classroom in 2009 amidst, what the press described at the time as, a rising global wave of antisemitism stemming from anti-Israel sentiment. Sadly, the HSP’s relevance as a resource for understanding the roots of antisemitism and all forms of intolerance is no less critical today.
“The motto at Foxboro Regional Charter School is ‘Enter to Learn, Exit to Lead.’ With its highly diverse student population, my hope is that teachers will maximize what The Cube represents to develop lessons that promote understanding and respect for differences.”
LARRY KESSLER (larrythek65@gmail.com) is a freelance writer based in North Attleboro. He blogs at larrytheklineup.blogspot.com