Jewish Community Day School class visits Holocaust Stamps Project

The fourth-grade from JCDS class stops for a photo. Below is an in-progress picture of “I Am the Last Witness.” /CHARLOTTE SHEER

On April 1, fourth-grade students from the Jewish Community Day School of Rhode Island, and their teacher, Melissa Kranowitz, traveled to Foxboro, Massachusetts, to learn about the Holocaust Stamps Project, which has been underway for the past six years at Foxborough Regional Charter School. The kindergarten to grade 12 school serves a diverse student population of more than 1,200 students from 25 area communities. Only a small minority of those who attend are Jewish.

The group met with the project’s facilitator, Jamie Droste, viewed the 11 one-of-a-kind postage stamp artworks already completed by the middle and high school students and got to work on the newest collage project, “I Am the Last Witness.” The design was inspired by a U.S. Holocaust Museum photograph of a Holocaust victim’s wrinkled, tattered shoe found within the confines of a concentration camp following the liberation. It is being used symbolically in the artwork to represent “the last witness” to the human atrocities.

Eventually an image of this shoe will be formed in the center of the collage using carefully fitted pieces of brown stamps. It will be completely surrounded by hundreds of little people shapes now being created by students and visitors to the project, including the JCDS class, using stamps from among the 5,405,761 that have been donated so far.

Seeing the process of making the art was eye-opening for the class. “I had no idea how they made the stamps into such beautiful mosaics,” said Abby Schwartz.

Fourth-grader Cooper Sock said, “It was fun helping out with the art project.”

Classmate Jared Weissman agreed. “I’m glad we got to see all of the cool mosaics made out of stamps,” he said.

The completed collage will be part of the 18-collage series being created to honor the lives of the 11 million Holocaust victims – 6 million Jews and 5 million others – whose diverse lives and beliefs made them targets of Nazis hatred and violence. The planned number of Holocaust-themed pictures is intentionally linked to the intertwined meanings of the Hebrew number 18 and the spelling of chai (life).

“This was exciting to be a part of such a meaningful project,” said Kranowitz. “The children really got a sense of how large the number 6 million is by seeing the endless number of stamps.”

“That was a great field trip,” said Alena Wiebe.

The Holocaust Stamps Project began during the 2009-2010 school year as a curriculum-based enrichment activity in the fifth-grade classroom of Charlotte Sheer, now retired from FRCS. It has since become an important part of the school’s Community Service Learning program, serving as a springboard for lessons not only about history and civics, but also the importance of living a life of tolerance, acceptance and respect for diversity.

Stamps have been donated from 33 states, Israel, Canada and the UK. Several Rhode Island synagogues and a number of the state’s residents are ongoing participants in the HSP. The goal is to collect one stamp for each life lost – a total of 11,000,000.

Postage stamps in any amount and in any condition, unwanted stamp collections and albums are welcome by the Holocaust Stamps Project, FRCS, 131 Central St., Foxboro, Mass. 02035. For more information, please visit the HSP website:

foxboroughrcs.org/students-families/frcs-holocaust-stamp-project. Droste can be reached at jdroste@foxboroughrcs.org.

CHARLOTTE SHEER, founder of the Holocaust Stamp Project, retired from teaching at Foxborough Regional Charter School in June 2012, but has remained actively involved as a volunteer and spokesperson for the Project.