Defiant daffodils: How a living memorial in Portsmouth will honor 1.5 million child Holocaust victims

PORTSMOUTH — Growing up Jewish in Hampton Roads in the 1940s and ‘50s, Myrna Teck didn’t quite know what the Holocaust was.

“I wish I could say I became aware of it growing up, but I really don’t think I did,” said Teck, the grandchild of Polish immigrants who had fled pogroms early in the century.

She didn’t comprehend the magnitude until the early ‘80s, when she became involved with the Tidewater Jewish Federation and developed a sense of responsibility in heightening awareness among others, especially the Jewish community. In 2018, she visited her ancestral “shtetl,” the village in Poland from which her family emigrated, and eventually learned of The Daffodil Project, which shares her goal of remembrance.

From 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday, the Jewish Museum & Cultural Center in Portsmouth will plant 3,000 bulbs as part of an international commemoration of the 1.5 million children who died in the Holocaust. The museum is asking members of the public to help. Trenches will be ready; people just need to help plant.

Daffodils were chosen for several reasons, including how the shape and color of the flowers recall the six-pointed star Jews were forced to wear during the Holocaust.

There may even be a link to the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, when Jewish residents fought German troops who were trying to deport them to death camps. Marek Edelman, one of the few survivors, received a bouquet of daffodils from an unknown sender on the anniversary of the uprising for many years and laid daffodils on the site each year, according to the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. Now, paper daffodils and daffodil pins appear in Warsaw each spring.

Warsaw residents and government officials honor the fighters of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising on the occasion of the 79th anniversary of the ghetto's ill-fated struggle against the German Nazi troops, in Warsaw, Poland, Tuesday, April 19, 2022. The fighters put up armed resistance after German troops began to destroy the ghetto and send its residents to death camps. One of the revolt's commanders who survived the struggle, Marek Edelman, used to lay daffodils at the monument. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski) (Czarek Sokolowski/AP)

Teck sees another meaningful attribute of the daffodil.

“Daffodils are perennials. They come back every year,” she said. “Even though those 1.5 million children are gone from this Earth, their memory comes back every year.”

The resilient flowers also tend to spread, a living symbol of resistance to the Nazis’ attempt to bring the Jewish people to extinction.

For David Feldman, one of the founders of the Atlanta-based Daffodil Project, the act of planting is significant.

“It really motivates people. It gives them a sense of understanding and it lets them get their hands dirty,” he said. “It’s a physical process, not only a mental process.”

Feldman, inspired by a 2007 visit to his family’s ancestral home in Poland, started The Daffodil Project in Atlanta in 2010. The worldwide initiative now includes almost 760,000 bulbs planted in more than 15 countries. The website, www.daffodilproject.net, provides bulbs, generally sourced from Holland. There’s even a variety engineered in Israel that thrives in warmer climates than daffodils normally would.

Most of the Portsmouth museum’s bulbs are bought with donations of $36 or $72 for 50 or 100 bulbs. The Atlanta-based Daffodil project provides the first 250 for free, a memorial plaque and printable copies of stories of about 50 child Holocaust victims for anyone who signs up on its website,

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“In about 70% of cases it doesn’t cost them anything to sign up,” Feldman said. “Now, we have probably about 250 sites that plant every year.”

Teck hopes the cemetery in her shtetl, Goniądz — the original catalyst for her participation in the project — will be one of those perennial sites, adding more blooms each year. The first batch bloomed this past spring. Teck has been leading efforts to restore the cemetery since her 2018 visit. It was next to a pristine Catholic cemetery.

The Catholic cemetery was so beautifully maintained that “I think they cut the grass with fingernail clippers, it’s just so perfectly landscaped,” Teck said. The Jewish cemetery, however, was overgrown with weeds, brush and trees.

Standing in the middle of that abandoned cemetery sparked something in her, she said.

“I obsessed for three days about who was responsible for this, whether it should be Poland or Germany or the descendants of Jews around the world or all people around the world,” Teck said. “And I realized I was asking myself the wrong question. It didn’t matter who was responsible. Because whoever it was, they weren’t doing anything. It mattered what I could do.”

Visit jewishmuseumportsmouth.org for more information

Katrina Dix, 757-222-5155, katrina.dix@virginiamedia.com.