Shenandoah County students dedicate Holocaust memorial garden

Students at North Fork Middle School dedicated a Daffodil Project Holocaust Memorial Garden on Thursday: now only one of three across Virginia.

The students planted 42 flower bulbs representing Penina Weisz Bowman and her 42 family members, who were killed in the Holocaust during World War II.

Donna Shrum, an eighth-grade teacher at the school, was teaching the Diary of Anne Frank and freelance writing a story on Bowman, which led to the dedication. Shrum's grandfather was also in a World War II Prisoner of War camp.

"As I grew older and learned about the Holocaust, I wanted to make sure that students knew about it, because I feel like they're forgetting, that it's not being emphasized like it used to be," said Shrum.

A recent survey by the Claim Conference even found that nearly half of millennials could not name a single Holocaust concentration camp.

When Bowman turned 17, her parents, two sisters and brother were taken to Auschwitz, where their mother died. Her father died at Dauchau just before 1945. One sister stayed in Cluj, Romania, where Penina was born, while their brother, Penina and another sister went to Israel.

It was in a displaced persons camp in Salzburg, Austria that Penina met her would-be husband Harold Bowman. He gave her three yards of parachute silk to sew a wedding dress, which she smuggled into Israel. That dress is now on display at the William Breman Jewish Heritage and Holocaust Museum in Atlanta.

The Bowmans eventually settled in Atlanta. Mrs. Bowman died on March 30, 2018 on her 71st wedding anniversary.

Now, on what would have been Bowman's 91st birthday, North Folk students have planted the daffodils as symbols of hope that come back every spring and also resemble the badges Jewish people had to wear. They also laid down painted rocks representing people, places and events in Bowman's life.

Plus, the students wrote letters that will be sent to Penina's three children.

"I am so proud of my students," said Shrum. "I am so proud of what they've done today."

The Daffodil Project Holocaust Memorial Project has planted more than 70,000 flower bulbs across the globe, with a goal of 1.5 million.

"It makes me feel like a good person just knowing that other people have planted it all around the world and we get to be one of those people," said 8th grader Jason Dinges.

The other two Virginia gardens are at the Virginia Holocaust Museum in Richmond and at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg.