The Foxboro Regional Charter School Holocaust Stamp Project has collected over 5 million stamps donated from around the world. High school students in the project have used the stamps to create collages honoring victims and events of the Holocaust. One collage depicts Alice Sommer, the oldest known Holocaust survivor, at her piano. Another commemorates the Kindertransport that rescued Jewish children from Nazi Germany on trains to Britain. The students hope to reach 11 million stamps, one for each estimated victim of the Holocaust, to honor their lives and help educate others.

1. Andrew Steel
(online publication of article in The Foxboro Reporter here:
http://www.foxbororeporter.com/articles/2015/01/22/features/16483908.txt)
Eleven Million
Jamie Droste, Student Life Advisor at the Foxboro Regional Charter School, dropped a
big old bin on the table in front of me. It was filled to the brim with stamps.
“If you reach your hand in, you can come up with something from 1932, right up through
2014, and everything in between. We even have some from the 1800s. And, we have several
more bins just like this one.” The girls seated around me nodded in agreement, grinning as I
gawked.
“Where do they all come from?” I asked. She put her hand on her chin.
“We get them from all over the U.S., Canada...Great Britain...Israel...” She smiled. “We
print a lot of fliers.”
She gave me a number: 4,860,894 stamps. “Plus, we have half a million to a million
stamps uncounted.”
“Sometimes we get a few stamps in an envelope. Sometimes we get 40 pound boxes.”
She indicated a stack of bins in her office. “We have people who donate lifetime stamp
collections. A person [who collected stamps] passes, and nobody knows what to do with it.”
This is the work of the Foxboro Regional Charter School Holocaust Stamp Project. And
though it may initially come across as tedious, perhaps even insane, to sort 5 million stamps, that
is exactly the point: in spite of whatever madness surrounds the project, every stamp counts.
“People today, they get bullied just because of their ethnicity,” stated Katelyn Caradonna,
one of the high school students at FRCS. She, as well as fellow students Nancia Poteau,
Temitope Faleye, Letaya Liles-Moses, and Deedee Haith, had obliged me an interview. Along
with classmates Marissa Durden and Nate O'Connor, these girls have not only spent a whole lot
of time sorting stamps; they have also sketched, clipped, and pasted together several collages of
Holocaust history with stamps from their collection.
Before I'd sat down, Mrs. Droste had walked me through a number of works from the
Holocaust Stamp Project: “Books can not be Killed by Fire”, an as-of-yet unfinished piece
remembering the German Student Union's burning of subversive literature in Nazi Germany.
“Evolution of the Pink Triangle”, headed by the School's GSA to acknowledge the accused
homosexuals and gay sympathizers killed in the Holocaust. “KRISTALLNACHT-the Night of
Broken Glass”, a piece completed by Nate O'Connor over the course of a year to highlight the
horrors of November 9-10, 1938.
However, at the work-in-progress tentatively entitled the “Alice Sommer Collage”, she
turned it over to the girls.
““Alice Herz Sommer was 110 years old, the oldest holocaust survivor [in 2014]...The
girls saw a youtube presentation on Alice, and they fell in love with her.”
“She's so cute!” Temitope decreed.
“I didn't say that,” Letaya disagreed. “I said 'she's so old'.”
Letaya eventually came around though. “She was a concert pianist, and she just had an
amazing, positive attitude.”
The girls convened to put together a collage in her honor. I asked about the purple Statue

2. of Liberty stamps serving as the piece's 'backdrop'. Deedee spoke up: “We chose the purple
because it's a happy color. and we chose the statue [of liberty] for Freedom. ”
A simple message, but a poignant one, as Katelyn added: “Everyone deserves freedom.”
Featured at the center of the piece is a (partially completed) piano. I watched as they
filled in the black keys with stamps reading “celebrate”. “They're colorful and bright, like she
was,” stated Letaya.
Another collage, “The Kindertransport”, was completed last year in remembrance of the
children who fled Germany and other Nazi occupied territories via train. The girls explained to
me that the stamps on the left half of the image, where the train was rolling to, were mostly
British stamps.
I noted the blue sky, comprised of dove stamps. “In every collage, there's a dove,”
Deedee told me.
The train tracks are styled from red and white cutouts of the word “Love”. I asked about
them.“We picked the train tracks because it's like the parents are bringing the children to
England with their love”, Katelyn said.
Also featured is a stamp of Adolf Hitler, stern and proud amongst the black smoke to the
right. “Who prints an Adolf Hitler stamp?” I asked facetiously. “Nazis do”, Mrs. Droste intoned
gravely.
I was amazed with the creativity these students have expressed. I asked them what
inspired them to join the group.
“At first it was for college,” Letaya stated. “AND THEN. Then, when you learn more
about it...it pushes you. You want to learn even more.”
“We commemorate 9/11 every year,” Katelyn added. “But there are Jewish people who
live here, Jewish people who go to this school, and they don't really get to commemorate this.”
“These people were innocent”, added Nancia. “They didn't deserve any of this.”
The Holocaust occurred some 70 years ago. When its genocidal machinations were made
public; when the stories and images of its wrath became known; the world was shaken. It was
unfathomable.
70 years later, we still search for answers of humanity in the ashes. But through dialogue,
through coming together and trying to understand, we can learn to cope. And, perhaps more
importantly today, we can learn to extend our lessons beyond that bleak time in history which
these students have expressed with their work.
As it so happens, International Holocaust Remembrance Day is coming up on January
27th. If you would like to help commemorate the Holocaust, or else the efforts of the students and
previous volunteers, the FRCS Holocaust Stamp Project is always looking for volunteers to help
sort the hundreds of thousands of stamps still in need of counting. To volunteer, or else to donate
stamps to help the group reach its goal of 11 million stamps (one for every estimated Holocaust
victim), please contact Jamie Droste: jdroste@foxboroughrcs.org.