The Butterfly

Click 2 and read the poem by the boy Pavel Friedmann, also from the Theresienstadt Ghetto.

Look, read and think:
What does the butterfly symbolize for Eva and Pavel? Why did they choose to draw or write about a butterfly?

(Eva’s painting and Pavel’s poem are published in a book entitled “…I never saw another butterfly…”. In the book you can find more drawings and poems by children who lived in the Theresienstadt Ghetto.)

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The Butterfly \ Pavel Friedmann

Last he was, the last of his kind,
And so satisfied, bitter and colorful –
That maybe, somewhere in the glitter splits of stone white
Seemed yellow
And as he was reaching up his wings
Flew to kiss the ending of my world.

It has been seven weeks time
That I am here –
Imprisoned in the ghetto
Here my loved ones have found me
.The snapdragon flower he too calls me here
And the chestnut in the yard, fully white
blossomed reaches his hand out to me
But a butterfly, I have not seen in here
And this had been the last, the last of his kind,
Since butterflies do not live
In a ghetto.

The Butterfly, Eva (Hava) Lubova, Theresienstadt Ghetto, Czechoslovakia

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