Anthology 2005

One Last Butterfly

Little Jacob had always loved the butterflies.  On the pleasantly cool summer evenings as he and his mother made their way back home on the dusty road that snaked its way out of the city, Jacob always begged his mother to pause along “The Butterfly Field,” a clear, grassy span of land filled with buttercups.  There he would stand and silently, hypnotically observe the dozens of yellow monarchs that inhabited the field flit and twirl from flower to flower in search of the early evening dew.  The silent beating of their oh so delicate wings was to him more beautiful than the music of an orchestra, and the way that they joyfully floated about was to him more moving and inspiring than the psalms of David which his mother read to him nightly.

“Please mother, just a few more minutes,” Jacob pleaded as his mother began to pull him gently away from the fencepost on which he leaned, spellbound.

“But Jacob, you’ve watched the butterflies every summer day since you were a baby; surely they must not interest you that much, six years later.”

“But mother, they do! They do!” the boy gently exclaimed.  “They’re just so beautiful.  They make me think that God made them just for me, just to make me happy.  Did he, mother?  Did God make the butterflies for me?”

“Perhaps he did, Jacob, perhaps God made everything just to make us happy,” she replied, tenderly taking Jacob’s hand and leading him down the road, away from the Butterfly Field and toward their small, three-room house.

“Did God make something special for everybody?”

“I guess so.”

"Then what did he make special for you, to make you happy.”

“Well, Jacob, he made you.”

And as the woman and her child continued to traverse the dusty, serpentine lane, she peered lovingly down at the boy and, with a smile, wiped a tear from her eye.

But that was in the good days—the days before the screams and the weeping and the guns and the dying.  That was before the hate and the Yellow Stars and the ghettos.

When terrible rumors, whisperings of war, of empty homes, of exterminations, began to wisp through the air, Jacob’s mother, just like all of the Jewish families, assumed a state of shocked, silent denial.  Nevertheless, the fear was spreading.

One autumn evening, Jacob returned home from school with tears in his eyes.  “Mother,” he said, beginning to sob lightly, “Is it true what Eli said today, that his uncle’s family in Warsaw was taken away by a bunch of bad men and never heard from again, just because they were Jewish like us?”

His mother hurriedly dropped the blanket that she was patching and quickly took Jacob in her arms.  “I don’t know, dear, I don’t know.  We can only pray that it isn’t true, and even if it is, we’re safe here, so far away from Warsaw, so far out here in the countryside.”

“Are you sure, mother, are you certain that the bad men won’t take us away,” sobbed Jacob as he buried his face in her apron.

“Yes, dear, yes.  It’s still early, would you like to go see the butterflies?  Before they go away for the winter?”  As a silent affirmation, Jacob wiped his eyes across his dirty sleeve and looked up at his mother with a slight smile.

That was the last time that Jacob was able to visit Butterfly Field.  The very next night, while Jacob and his mother slept soundly in their beds, a noisy, green truck roared up the lane and rumbled to a stop in front of the small house.  Before either Jacob or his mother was fully awakened, rough hands tore them from their beds and harshly tossed them into the back of the crowded vehicle.

For not only Jacob and his mother, but for all of the Jews, the reality was so much worse than the rumors.  When the truck arrived in the city, its human contents were roughly tossed into the middle of a large, shadowy town square.  They stood there, shivering from the cold and trembling with fear.  Jacob’s mother held him close as he sobbed into her dress.  “Shhhh,” she hushed him, “If you make too much noise they might take you away from me.  Just think about the butterflies; if they take you away from me then I can’t take you to see them again, so please, Jacob, please be silent.”

Jacob dried his tears and silenced his sobs, but his heart was still filled with terror and uncertainty.  As the square began to fill with other large groups of terrified people, the soldiers began to shout orders and roughly prod the crowd toward the hulking, steaming locomotive which was waiting at the station on the far side of the square.  Jacob’s mother held him more tightly than ever.  “Please, Jacob, please don’t let go of me, I don’t want to lose you.  Remember the butterflies,” she pleaded as they were being driven onto a dingy cattle car. 

When the cattle car was nearing its capacity, the soldiers came and forced more people into the cramped space so that everyone had to stand shoulder to shoulder.  During all this time, though, Jacob’s mother never loosened her grip on him.

“Where are we going?” Jacob whispered to his mother, afraid to even speak aloud.

“I don’t know, Jacob.”

“Will there be butterflies where we’re going?” Jacob asked hopefully, “The bad men haven’t taken them away too have they?”

“Of course not, Jacob, how could they ever take all of your butterflies away?”  She looked longingly down at her terrified son and, in a jolt of remembrance, reached into a small pocket in the folds of her dress and drew out a small slip of paper and a broken bit of a charcoal pencil.  “Here,” she said, handing the items to Jacob, “Take this, I want you to draw the most beautiful butterfly in the world, okay, and always keep it with you, hide it, so that they can never take all your butterflies away.”

The young boy took the crumpled yellowed paper and gingerly, carefully traced the outline of a butterfly.  He intently added swirling, marvelous details to the wings and completed his masterpiece with a pair of curly antennas.  He smiled down at the drawing and looked up at his mother, proudly showing her his drawing.  She nodded approvingly; “Now,” she whispered, “Hide it in your shoe so that they won’t find it.” 

The hellish journey lasted perhaps for only a few minutes, or perhaps it lasted for months—to the passengers time was no longer relevant.  Every minute seemed to be elongated by fear, by hunger, by misery.  When that funeral train finally grinded to a halt, all of the passengers were forced out onto a muddy, cold flat.  Jacob’s mother continued to hold him tightly as the stood there, petrified, glancing around at the barbed wire and the guards with guns and the rows and rows of block buildings.

The guards, with harsh voices and violent tempers, forced the trembling mass into a long line.  At the head of the line, in front of the massive iron gates of the camp, stood two tables at which were seated four well-dressed officers.  As the line wound past the officers, the rough hands of the guards separated the queue into three smaller lines: the men went to the left, the women went to the right, and the children were torn from the arms of their parents and sent trembling, screaming, and sobbing between the two tables.  The only sounds that were louder than the cries of the children were the desperate wailings of the parents, who were pleadingly reaching out to their children, despite the shouts and threats of the guards.  The officers remained unmoved, looking callously on at the pitiful spectacle.

Days passed, days of cold and hunger and misery, and Jacob never saw his mother again.  Every day, as Jacob and the other children made their way to the mess line, Jacob longingly scanned the skies for a flash of yellow, for a flutter of wings, but there were none to be seen.  All there was was screaming, sadness, and dying. 

More and more people were being ushered into the camp every day, and the small, frigid building in which Jacob and the other children lived was becoming more and more crowded.  One especially cold morning, an officer accompanied by several guards entered the children’s quarters and forced them to form a line outside. 

“You’re all too filthy; you smell like a bunch of rats,” the officer shouted, peering hatefully down at the line of shivering children. “I think its time that you all had a good shower.”

When the officer had finished his terse speech, the guards roughly prodded the line of children toward the large concrete building that stood at the center of the camp.  Jacob’s heart raced with terror: he had seen so many people go into this building, but he had never seen any of them come out again.  The officer halted the line at the large heavy doors and began a whispered conversation with another officer that stood at the door.  While the two men spoke, Jacob carefully bent down and removed the crumpled slip of paper from inside his shoe.  He carefully unfolded it, and as he stared at the picture, he thought of all the times that he and his mother had stopped at the Butterfly Field. 

A slight shadow of a smile spread across Jacob’s lips as the officer gave the order for the doors to be opened.  Jacob tightly gripped the picture in his closed fist as the line began to move again, and, before the shadows of that hateful building enveloped him forever, he lifted his clenched fist toward the sky and opened it to let the cold wind carry his precious picture away.  However, there was no crumpled, dingy piece of paper in his hand, for where the picture had been, there was a magnificent yellow butterfly, the brightest, most beautiful that Jacob had ever seen.  For a brief few seconds, Jacob watched the stunning creature flap its fragile wings and felt the tickle of its tiny legs. 

As Jacob was roughly pushed into the dark building, the butterfly took flight and wound its way skyward, flitting its way toward the growing sunlight. The tiny insect, with all of its bright yellowness seemed to cast a radiant glow over the cold grayness of the camp, over the coldness, over the sadness, and over the dying.  Jacob intently watched the butterfly flutter over the camp until the doors closed behind him.  Even after the doors had sealed him off forever from the rest of the world, he was still smiling happily, contentedly.                   

—  Josh Stamper

This story was inspired by the poem "The Butterfly" by Pavel Friedmann, Theresienstadt, 4 June 1942.

 Authors retain all rights to their work.