MALE NARRATOR Like the Heart of Auschwitz, there are many other symbols of people coming together found throughout the museum. One of the most profound are butterflies. You’ll find them in the Butterfly Loft located in the center of the museum and the Butterfly Project on the second floor of the building, outside the classrooms. Butterflies have come to represent the one-and-a-half million children who perished during the Holocaust at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators. In 1995, the museum started the Butterfly Project to honor and remember these innocent lives lost. The project was inspired by a poem titled “The Butterfly,” which was written in 1942 by a 21-year-old man named Pavel Friedmann. Over the years, people from around the world made butterflies out of almost every material imaginable. A sampling of those made can be seen on the second floor of the museum. Each handmade butterfly represents one child, one life, ended by evil. The butterflies on display and the rest of the collection, of handmade butterflies, now have a permanent home located just outside the museum’s entrance. Pavel Friedman’s poem is posted near the Butterfly Loft. Pavel was murdered in a gas chamber at Auschwitz. He was 23 years old.