How this school collected 11 million stamps in a project to remember the Holocaust
An ambitious initiative to commemorate Shoah victims has attracted worldwide attention after collecting a staggering 11 million stamps
A nine-year-old school project set up to commemorate people who perished in the Holocaust has surpassed its unlikely goal to collect 11 million stamps – representing the lives of six million Jews and five million other victims of intolerance.
Hours before Kol Nidre earlier this month, community volunteers for the Holocaust Stamp Project at the Foxborough Regional Charter School in Massachusetts for children of kindergarten age up to 12 delivered some 70,000 cancelled stamps to the organisers.
The school’s student life adviser, Jamie Droste, who oversees community service learning for Foxborough, said the delivery brought the total to 11,011,979.
By chance, the goal-setting event took place on a day a television crew was at the school, in a suburb south of Boston, to report on the remarkable project.
The project began nine years ago in the fifth-grade classroom of Charlotte Sheer as a result of her students reading Number the Stars, the award-winning work of historical fiction by Lois Lowry set during the Holocaust.
By collecting 11 million stamps one stamp at a time, Sheer envisioned the project as a way to make tangible the incomprehensible magnitude of the genocide.
From its modest beginnings of collecting a few thousand of the tiny scraps of paper, the Holocaust Stamp Project has transformed into an all-volunteer community service component for the school’s high school students.
It has also attracted volunteers from the community who help with the time consuming process of counting and sorting the proceeds of the collections.
Droste, who has directed the project since Sheer’s retirement about five years ago, said it was a way for students to learn about the importance of acceptance, tolerance and respect for diversity.
Over the years, as word of the project spread through reports in the media locally and in Israel and Germany, stamps have arrived from 47 states and 22 countries including Australia, Canada, the UK, Israel and Ireland.
Some, including many from Holocaust survivors or their families, are sent a few at a time while others, including some rare items, have been donated by collectors in batches of thousands.
As part of the project, students have transformed many of the stamps into 11 meticulously crafted and colourful collages whose intricate designs reflect a Holocaust-related theme.
Droste said the goal was to complete 18 collages. Those made so far are being displayed for the community during Holocaust remembrance programmes.
Only a few of the school’s 1,300 students are Jewish, Droste added. The rest come from diverse cultures and backgrounds, with many from immigrant families whose lives are far removed from the events of the Holocaust. Some are from countries that have also experienced war or economic hardships. “The multicultural diversity makes the school strong,” she said.
In today’s political climate, students are aware of the hate in the world, Droste observed.
“This is one lesson that reaches all of them. We need to focus on peace and what is good and never forget the lives of those who were taken because of intolerance,” she said.
The project was recognised during the Yom Hashoah commemoration last spring with an award by the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston.
Droste said she is hoping the collages and collection will find a permanent home at an institution or organisation where they can be on display.
Thank you for helping to make Jewish News the leading source of news and opinion for the UK Jewish community. Today we're asking for your invaluable help to continue putting our community first in everything we do.
For as little as £5 a month you can help sustain the vital work we do in celebrating and standing up for Jewish life in Britain.
Jewish News holds our community together and keeps us connected. Like a synagogue, it’s where people turn to feel part of something bigger. It also proudly shows the rest of Britain the vibrancy and rich culture of modern Jewish life.
You can make a quick and easy one-off or monthly contribution of £5, £10, £20 or any other sum you’re comfortable with.
100% of your donation will help us continue celebrating our community, in all its dynamic diversity...
Engaging
Being a community platform means so much more than producing a newspaper and website. One of our proudest roles is media partnering with our invaluable charities to amplify the outstanding work they do to help us all.
Celebrating
There’s no shortage of oys in the world but Jewish News takes every opportunity to celebrate the joys too, through projects like Night of Heroes, 40 Under 40 and other compelling countdowns that make the community kvell with pride.
Pioneering
In the first collaboration between media outlets from different faiths, Jewish News worked with British Muslim TV and Church Times to produce a list of young activists leading the way on interfaith understanding.
Campaigning
Royal Mail issued a stamp honouring Holocaust hero Sir Nicholas Winton after a Jewish News campaign attracted more than 100,000 backers. Jewish Newsalso produces special editions of the paper highlighting pressing issues including mental health and Holocaust remembrance.
Easy access
In an age when news is readily accessible, Jewish News provides high-quality content free online and offline, removing any financial barriers to connecting people.
Voice of our community to wider society
The Jewish News team regularly appears on TV, radio and on the pages of the national press to comment on stories about the Jewish community. Easy access to the paper on the streets of London also means Jewish News provides an invaluable window into the community for the country at large.
We hope you agree all this is worth preserving.
