Douglas Players
Potluck Productions and Douglas Players perform a reading of “I Never Saw Another Butterfly” May 1st, 2010, on stage at the Grand Theatre.
I Never Saw Another Butterfly is a collection of works of art and poetry by Jewish children who lived in the concentration camp Theresienstadt. The play is named after a poem by one of the children, 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 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.
- by Pavel Friedman
Pavel Friedmann was born in Prague on January 7, 1921. He was deported to Terezin on April 26, 1942 and later to Auschwitz, where he died on September 29, 1944.
The Stage
