Pavel Friedmann was a Jewish and Czechoslovak poet who died during the Holocaust in 1944. Posthumously, he came to fame for his poem ‘The Butterfly.’ It was written on a thin piece of paper discovered after the liberation of Czechoslovakia, along with several other poems.
In this heartbreaking poem, Friedmann writes about the last butterfly he saw and uses it as a symbol for loss and approaching death during the Holocaust.
He was the last. Truly the last.
Such yellowness was bitter and blinding
Like the sun’s tear shattered on stone.
That was his true colour.
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