The Meaning Behind the Yellow Daffodils

At our recent Yom HaShoah commemoration with the Hamilton Jewish Federation, many attendees wore a small but powerful symbol: yellow paper daffodils.

These were not decorative. They were intentional.

In the weeks leading up to the event, our volunteers, Stefanie Waxman, Yolanda Whybragz, and Margaret’s Legacy's logistics coordinator Maggie Norris, brought the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews’ global daffodil campaign into Catholic schools across Hamilton and the surrounding areas.

Students didn’t just make the daffodils. They learned what the daffodil represents in Jewish history.

Today, April 19th, is the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the largest act of Jewish armed resistance during the Holocaust. A group of young, under-equipped Jews chose to fight back against the Nazis. They were outmatched, but not without agency.

This part of history challenges a simplified narrative of victimhood and highlights something more complex: individuals making values-driven decisions under impossible circumstances, demonstrating courage, responsibility, and moral clarity.

The daffodil itself comes from Marek Edelman, one of the uprising’s last surviving leaders. Each year on April 19, he would lay daffodils at the Warsaw Ghetto memorial. After his passing, the POLIN Museum transformed this quiet act into a global campaign.

Today, the daffodil represents:

• resistance

• remembrance

• and the responsibility to act

Especially in a time when conversations around antisemitism are often polarized or avoided, we were impressed at the students' curiosity and involvement in the program. It wasn’t a given.

They asked questions. They made connections. They showed up. That is what education is all about.

Thank you to everyone who made this initiative possible and to the school administrators, educators and students who carried it forward.