St. Louis Public Library: Enjoying Libraries With David Friedman

St. Louis MO

04 June, 2022

2:03 PM

Description

Press release from the St. Louis Public Library: June 2, 2022 This man is David Friedman. Little did I know the saga of hardship, resilience, and passion that hid behind each pencil stroke… The 1930s, however, would begin a decades-long trajectory of loss and terror as Friedman was forced to flee his chosen home in Berlin for the city of Prague, leaving behind his life's work to be looted by the Nazis. From 1938 to 1941, Friedman, his wife Mathilde, and their young daughter Mirjam Helene resided in Prague where Friedman supported his family with his art skills. With the invasion of Czechoslovakia however, Friedman and his family were sent to the Łódź Ghetto, once again leaving behind his work to be looted by the Nazis. While living as a refugee in Prague and later as a prisoner in the ghetto, Friedman's art offered a unique peek into a rich and vibrant Jewish culture resolutely enduring despite incredible oppression that was ultimately destroyed by the Nazis. His work captured moments of both joy and despair as well as snapshots of daily life in the ghetto and has served as a means of identifying survivors and victims alike in the years since their creation. In 1945, David Friedman was liberated from Gleiwitz I, a sub-camp of Auschwitz, by the Soviet Army. He was 51 years old, the only member of his family to survive, and faced with the prospect of starting his life over from scratch. But he was not cowed. By 1962, Friedman was retired from his career, but the memories of his time in the ghettos and camps haunted him still. Since his liberation, Friedman had produced a constant stream of artwork depicting his time under the Nazi bootheel, culminating in his series "Because They Were Jews!" which served as a visual diary of his time in Łódź and Auschwitz. The pain of recreating these memories through art led Friedman to seek respite in local parks and libraries, sketching everyday scenes of everyday people doing everyday activities. Doing so was a way of reconnecting with his love of art outside of the pall cast by his more serious subjects. In January of 1963, Friedman's therapeutic ventures led him to Central Library where he began anonymously sketching a series of strangers from the secrecy of the bookshelves. Upon his passage in 1980, a handful of these sketches were gifted to St. Louis Public Library through the generosity of his wife and daughter. The subtle power of those images stood out to me even after nearly sixty years, prompting an interview between myself and Friedman's own daughter, Miriam Morris. I close this blog now with a profuse thank you to Miriam Friedman Morris for sharing her time and her story with me. I am enormously honored and touched by her generosity and her dedication to her father's memory. On a more personal note, I find that I am moved to explore the preservation of my own family's story. My parents' generation is the old guard now, having lost my last grandparent in November of last year. If these memories and moments are to live beyond them though, it falls to us to carry the torch into tomorrow by recording and preserving the stories they left behind in their art, their work, and their homes. "Enjoyment in Libraries with the Candid Pencil of David Friedman(n) (1893-1980)" Gregory P. Ames Photograph Collection, A Celebration of Readers and Reading – by Laura G., History & Languages Librarian This press release was produced by the St. Louis Public Library. The views expressed here are the author's own.