(JTA) — Students at a school in England are working to collect 6.6 million burnt matchsticks to remember the Jewish victims of the Holocaust.
The students at Chilton Trinity School in Bridgwater had collected 66,000 matchsticks as of last Friday prior to their target completion date of Jan. 27, International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
"Doing something like this is so powerful and emotional," head of religious studies Tess Hurst told the Bridgwater Mercury. "Each burnt matchstick represents one person’s life who was killed."
The students hope to display the matchsticks in a glass monument outside the school’s new building, which it has occupied since November. A 3-D mockup of the 6.6 million matchstick sculpture is being produced by the school’s science department.
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