Pavel Friedmann - Holocaust Memorial - Sun City, Arizona, USA - Etched in Stone on Waymarking.com

The Butterfly

The last, very the 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.

June 4, 1942 Pavel Friedmann

Pavel Friedmann (January 7, 1921 – September 29, 1944) was a Jewish Czechoslovak poet who received posthumous fame for his poem The Butterfly. He was in Theresienstadt concentration camp before being transferred to Auschwitz, where he died.

After Thereisenstadt was liberated, his poem was among many found and gathered into an anthology I Never Saw Another Butterfly, first published by Hana Volavková and Jirí Weil in 1959. It was the source of inspiration for the Butterfly Project of the Holocaust Museum Houston, an exhibition of 1.5 million paper butterflies which were created to symbolize the same number of children that perished in the Holocaust.

This poem is on a Holocaust Memorial located in Sunland Memorial Park, Sun City, Arizona. On the other side of the memorial is a verse from Psalm 23:4

Yea though I walk through the
valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil,
For Thou art with me.

Address: Sunland Memorial Park 15826 Del Webb Blvd Sun City, AZ USA Website: [Web Link]

Visit Instructions:
Please include the following with your submission of a visit:

1. Photograph as a proof of your visit.
2. Short narrative. Tell of your visit, share something new, edit the waymark with additional quotes found a the location, add new visiting hours or anything that would be nice to know when visiting the location.
3. Finally, please add a visit if you go to the area and you find the building, memorial, memorial or structure has been removed. Please submit an edit to the waymark adding the words {Historic/Removed} at the end. Also, edit the short description to annotate the reason it was removed for the value to other visitors.

Recent Visits/Logs:

Date Logged Log User Rating   06/17/2011 Tsegi Mike and Desert Viking visited it