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The poem "The Butterfly" by Pavel Friedmann is painted on a mural commemorating the Holocaust. It was photographed during a small dedication ceremony held at Timpanogos High School on Friday, Jan. 27, 2023.

Harrison Epstein, Daily Herald

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Social studies teacher T.J. Bertrand speaks in front of a mural commemorating the Holocaust during a small dedication ceremony held at Timpanogos High School on Friday, Jan. 27, 2023.

Harrison Epstein, Daily Herald

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The name Renate Krochmal is painted on a ceramic butterfly affixed to a mural commemorating the Holocaust at Timpanogos High School on Friday, Jan. 27, 2023. Krochmal was 8 years old when she was killed at the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Harrison Epstein, Daily Herald

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Faculty, parents and students applaud a speech by social studies teacher T.J. Bertrand while dedicating a mural commemorating the Holocaust at Timpanogos High School on Friday, Jan. 27, 2023.

Harrison Epstein, Daily Herald

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A mural commemorating the Holocaust is shown during a small dedication ceremony held at Timpanogos High School on Friday, Jan. 27, 2023.

Harrison Epstein, Daily Herald

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Across the world on Friday, people came together for Holocaust Remembrance Day, honoring the nearly 6 million Jewish people murdered by Nazi Germany during World War II. Among those killed in the Holocaust were 1.5 million children, and Orem’s Timpanogos High School, in partnership with The Butterfly Project, is working to honor the individual children killed.

The school now features a painted mural with ceramic butterflies attached outside of the classroom occupied by social studies teacher T.J. Bertrand.

While it was dedicated Friday with a small ceremony, the project came together after two years of work between Bertrand and art teachers Jolynn Forman and Jody Benson. Benson’s ceramics students made the butterflies and Forman’s honors students painted the mural.

“This is basically the culmination of having enough butterflies and the mural completed to dedicate on international Holocaust Remembrance Day,” Bertrand said.

Each butterfly not only symbolizes a real child killed in the Holocaust, but was created by a Timpanogos student only after learning about the child’s life before and after being detained in a concentration camp. Moving forward, students will continue the interclass partnership and add butterflies as far as possible down the hallway.

“I think the fact that, how many students walk through this hallway everyday and the exposure to it every year is going to increase that awareness of it,” Bertrand said.

Holocaust Remembrance Day commemorates the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. The 78th anniversary of the liberation comes as there are fewer and fewer Holocaust survivors in the United States and around the world. While organizations work to digitize and memorialize the words of these survivors, Holocaust revisionism and denial continues.

As the events of World War II move further into the past, a vocal minority denying the actions of Nazi Germany attempt to obfuscate and rewrite history.

According to a 2020 study by Claims Conference, a nonprofit organizations seeking reparations for the Holocaust, approximately 63% of millennials and Gen Z respondents did not know that 6 million Jews were killed. In Utah, 44% could not name a concentration camp, 8% believed Jews caused the Holocaust and 26% believed that fewer than 2 million Jews were killed.

In his class, Bertrand hopes to help his students by providing them knowledge and primary sources.

“They’re looking at videos, they’re listening to testimonials, they’re looking at paperwork the Nazis even have, so there’s enough evidence and visual representation to help combat any of those deniers out there,” Bertrand said. “The biggest problem I have with students is their knowledge content — many of them have not been exposed to it.”

The Timpanogos mural is the first in Utah as part of The Butterfly Project and joins thousands around the world. The 41 butterflies now in place join approximately 312,000 worldwide — only about 20% of the group’s final goal.

Each butterfly was hand-designed with a theme in mind. One butterfly is painted the same colors as the French flag, symbolizing the child’s nationality, while others include Hebrew writing and or drawings of a Star of David.

“I didn’t know about the project coming into the class, but it was a welcome surprise,” said junior Audrey Swank, who created one of the installation’s butterflies. “I got to learn all about this little girl who had to suffer through all these things and it was incredibly sad to hear about, but I’m so glad that I got to make a butterfly that’s symbolic of just her. You don’t get to learn a lot about these kids that had to suffer through this. And it’s really sad to think about but I’m glad we can commemorate their memory in a butterfly — such a beautiful, fragile creature.”

Swank’s ceramic was designed with the particular child in mind. It includes the number eight, her age when she died, and the wings are painted the colors of her flag.

The mural itself is a black, white and gray depiction of a child standing in a concentration camp behind barbed wire. As she reaches to her left, she touches a butterfly — now in color — as the rest of the mural shifts into a bright sky and landscape adorned with the ceramic butterflies.

“We drafted little ideas here and there. We split a ton of ideas and put them into one. That’s how we got the end result,” said Luis Pirir.

Pirir, along with fellow juniors Jace McKell and Will Lineback, was among the students who helped paint the landscape and attended Friday’s dedication. Different students painted sections of the mural based on their strengths and skills in an effort to make the final product.

“It brings the message across of what we wanted to represent. The sadness and, like, dull on one side but as soon as she’s touching the butterfly it’s full of happiness and joy,” Pirir said.

Also painted on the left side of the mural is the poem “The Butterfly” by Pavel Friedmann. Friedmann’s poem was written in 1942 while living in the Theresienstadt concentration camp and serves as the inspiration for The Butterfly Project. He died after being deported to Auschwitz in September 1944.

Moving forward, Bertrand is prepared to continue teaching about the Holocaust, even focusing his lesson next year on the event and other genocides, but hopes students are curious and continue to learn. The students already involved are now better-informed and connected to the Holocaust and children born almost a century before them.

“They deserved to live a life beyond the life that they lived, and this is their way of getting that,” Swank said.

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