I Never Saw Another Butterfly

Chuch of the Redeemer Choir, Morristown, NJ
Recorded Holocaust Remembrance Sunday, Novermber, 2010
Jen Russell, Soprano Soloist
Edward Alstrom, Organist/Director www.redeemermorristown.org

Pavel Friedman (January 7, 1921 -- September 29, 1944) was a Jewish Czechoslovak poet who received posthumous fame for his poem The Butterfly.

Little is known of Friedman's life prior to his incarceration at the ghetto Theresienstadt, where his arrival was recorded on April 26, 1942. On September 29, 1944 he was later deported to Auschwitz, where he died.

The text of 'The Butterfly' was discovered at Thereisenstadt after the ghetto was liberated. It has been included in collections of children's literature from the Holocaust era, most notably the anthology 'I Never Saw Another Butterfly', first published by Hana Volavková and Jiří Weil in 1959, although Friedman was 21 years old when the poem was composed. The poem also inspired the Butterfly Project of the Holocaust Museum Houston, an exhibition where 1.5 million paper butterflies were created to symbolize the same number of children that perished in the Holocaust.

The musical setting here is by Meri Kleinmann, about whom I have no other information, although if you have any, I'll gladly take it.

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.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• redeemer
• Thereisenstadt
• morristown
• pavel
• holocaust
• another
• friedman
• anthem
• choir
• choral
• klienmann
• inspirational
• butterfly

[NekoHimechan1]

Thank you,  I very much appreciate you for this.