I Never Saw Another Butterfly

May 4 
Commemoration Day in the Netherlands

🦋

I  Never Saw Another 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 good-bye.

For seven weeks I’ve lived in here

Penned up inside this ghetto.

But I have found what I love here.

The dandelions call to me

And the white chestnut branches in the court.

Only I never saw another butterfly. 

That butterfly was the last one.

Butterflies don’t live in here, in the ghetto. 

🦋

Written  by Pavel Friedman, June 4, 1942 

Born in Prague on Jan. 7, 1921.

Deported to the Terezin Concentration Camp on April 26, 1942. 

Died in Auschwitz on Sept. 29, 1944.