UPDATED: Foxborough Charter School Stamp Project Honors Holocaust Victims

Foxborough Regional Charter School English/language arts teacher Charlotte Sheer seeks parents to count stamps -- which have filled gallon-sized Ziploc containers.

At this school, a postage stamp symbolizes one of the 11 million Holocaust victims.

Students have collected 701,612, all donated over the past three years, to honor the victims of the Holocaust, Sheer said Monday.

The school seeks to collect 11 million stamps, each one symbolizing a victim, and create 18 artworks with them, "and the end result of the 11 million is not going to be determined until we get closer to the 11 million," says Sheer, the project's coordinator. All kinds of stamps are accepted, except metered ones, she says.

"A postage stamp has value when you buy it and use it. But when the letter is received, it's thrown away. It's tossed away like a piece of trash -- which is basically what Hitler did with 11 million people: he tossed people away like they were trash," says Sheer, a Sharon High School graduate.

Stamps now arrive regularly -- Sheer received three boxes on one recent day -- to the point where she's asking parents to help counting them. Parents need only write the total on a slip of paper.

"Our current goal is to try to reach our first one million by April 18, Yom haShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day)," Sheer says.

"Anyone with questions may email me at csheer@foxboroughrcs.org,"

Sheer says the project was inspired by her teaching the Lois Lowry novel, "Number the Stars," which she says is "set in Nazi-occupied Denmark."

Sheer's students also watch a DVD of the Paper Clips Project, where "a little tiny middle school collected six million, and then 11 million, paper clips to represent the people that were lost," Sheer says.

"So, I said, 'We have such a diverse culture in our school. We should really be doing some kind of a project," she says.

"But, we needed a symbol."

The project collected about 24,000 stamps the first year, a slow start compared to the current progress, Sheer says.

"People didn't really understand. They didn't think we were going to accomplish it," she says.

One of the three boxes arriving recently might have 50,000 to 100,000 stamps, she says. It came from the Spellman Stamp Museum. The museum's educational director has spoken with Sheer's four classes about the history of stamps, and has done a project with the students, she says.

The project has inspired students to ask questions about the Holocaust, including, "Why didn't anybody stop him?" Sheer says.

"The simple version of that is we had no Internet. People didn't know," she says.

"We also tell them that when visitors did come, there were model concentration camps. And when people from the outside world came to see what was going on, the Nazis would put on a show, like an entertaining party, and they would never really know what was going on there."

Now, one of the students' stamp art pieces features 11 figures, representing the 11 million people.

Each figure is filled with stamps from one of the countries the Nazis occupied, Sheer says.

"There were more than 11 occupied countries, but we only have the 11 figures," Sheer says.

A Star of David on the piece represents the state of Israel being established after the camps' liberation.

The star has a candle in the middle. Yellow stamps will fill it, "to represent the yellow 'Jude' badges that everybody had to wear if they were Jewish in Germany at the time," Sheer says.

"We're actually doing the candle the very last thing. Because it's like we're lighting the memorial candle for all of the people represented in the collage," she says.

The school serves about 1,200 students from 20 area communities: Attleboro, Avon, Brockton, Canton, Easton, Foxborough, Mansfield, Medfield, Medway, Millis, Norfolk, North Attleboro, Norton, Norwood, Plainville, Sharon, Stoughton, Walpole, West Bridgewater and Wrentham.