Question

1. What are 10 words (nouns or adjectives) that describe or are associated with

butterflies?

2. Why do you think a child living in a ghetto (basically a concentration camp for
children, NOT the same way 'ghetto' is used today) would write a poem about a
butterfly?

Answer 1

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.

Pavel Friedmann 4.6.1942

The poem is preserved in typewritten copy on thin paper in the collection of poetry by

Pavel Friedmann, which was donated to the National Jewish Museum during its

documentation campaign. It is dated June 4, 1942 in the left corner.

Pavel Friedmann was born January 7, 1921, in Prague and deported to Terezín* on

April 26, 1942. He died in Oswiecim* (Auschwitz) on September 29, 1944.

Step-by-step explanation: