Shalom Teens is excited to announce that they will be participating in the “Butterfly Project.”

In the spring of 1942 Pavel Friedmann, a prisoner of the Terezin concentration camp, wrote the moving poem “The Butterfly.”

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 gheto

Pavel Friedmann

Died in Auchwitz two years

After writing the poem

More than half a century later, activist Sue Klau was inspired by the words in The Butterfly. In commemoration of the one and a half million children murdered by the Nazis she developed this program.

Our butterflies will be on display with the millions of others at the HolocaustMuseumin Israel, and at our synagogues.