POETRY ON SHOAH






PAVEL FRIEDMANN

THE BUTTERFLY

The last, the very last,
So richly, brightly, dazzlingly yellow
Perhaps if the sun's tears would sing

against a white stone ...


Such, such a yellow
Is carried lightly 'way up high.
It went away I'm sure because it wished to
kiss the world goodbye.


For seven weeks I've lived in here,
Penned up inside this ghetto
But I have found my people here.
The dandelions call to me
And the white chestnut candles in the court.
Only I never saw another butterfly.

That butterfly was the last one.
Butterflies don't live in here,
In the ghetto.

4. 6. 1942



The author was a teenage Jew in the Terezin (Theresinstadt) Ghetto near Prague in 1942.
Along with the adult Jews, approximately 15,000 Jewish children from the Terezin Ghetto
were sent to Belzec, Sobibor and Chelmno death camps where they all perished.
Only around 100 children survived the Terezin Ghetto.

The translator of this poem, which is taken from the Yad Vashem publication, The Holocaust, is unknown.




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