On June 4, 1942, Pavel Friedmann, 21, finished a poem about the last butterfly he ever saw. "Butterflies," the Jewish writer concluded, "don't live in here, in the ghetto."

A few weeks earlier, the Germans had deported Friedmann to Terezín, Czechoslovakia (Theresienstadt in German), the walled military town where they began to ghettoize Czech Jews in the autumn of 1941. A year later 50,000 Jews were struggling to survive in Theresienstadt's deteriorating conditions.

Theresienstadt also became a concentration and transit camp for German and Western European Jews who were eventually deported to Auschwitz. In mid-1944 the Nazis temporarily beautified Theresienstadt to deceive an investigating committee from the International Red Cross and to make a propaganda film that pictured the ghetto as Hitler's gift to the Jews. The facts were very different. Of the over 140,000 Jews who were sent to Theresienstadt, 33,000 died and 88,000 were deported and killed. Only about 19,000 survived. Pictured is a standard identity card.

Despite starvation, overcrowding, disease, and the constant dread of transports to the East, the Jewish leadership of Rabbi Leo Baeck and others emphasized educational and cultural activities. Friedmann died in Auschwitz on September 29, 1944, but his poem, "I Never Saw Another Butterfly," exemplifies the artistic expressions from Theresienstadt, which are among the most precious documents recovered from the Holocaust.
Photo: Frihedsmuseet/United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archive