Pavel Friedmann


Pavel Friedmann was a Jewish Czechoslovak poet who received posthumous fame for his poem "The Butterfly".

Biography

Friedmann was born in Prague. Little is known about his early life. When he was 21 the occupying German authorities had him transported from Prague to Theresienstadt concentration camp, in the fortress and garrison city of Terezín, in what is now the Czech Republic. His arrival was recorded on April 28, 1942.
On June 4, 1942 he wrote the poem “The Butterfly” on a piece of thin copy paper. Several of his poems were discovered after the liberation of Czechoslovakia and subsequently donated to the State Jewish Museum,.
On September 29, 1944 he was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where he perished.

''The Butterfly''

The text of The Butterfly was discovered at Theresienstadt after the concentration camp 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. 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 Butterfly