An evolving memorial project · 2025–ongoing
Jiří’s
Flower
A child’s drawing. An artist’s response. A memorial carried into the future.
Enter the project
Sculpture · Archive · Film
From one surviving drawing, a public place of memory.
Jiří’s Flower is a sculpture for the Children’s Memorial Garden in Sarasota, Florida, inspired by a drawing made by Jiří Hugo Mahler in Terezín in 1944.
The project follows the drawing beyond the page—through Jiří’s life, Friedl Dicker-Brandeis’s art classes, archival research in Prague and Terezín, the making of a bronze sculpture, and a documentary film. It remains open and evolving as the memorial moves toward installation.
- Jiří Hugo Mahler
- 1935–1944
- Commission
- Children’s Memorial Garden
- Destination
- Sarasota, Florida
The original sheet
Two sides of
one drawing.
The house appears on one side. On the reverse: a table, two chairs, a vase and a single flower—the image that became the source for the sculpture.
Collection of the Jewish Museum in Prague
The teacher
A space for imagination inside Terezín.
Artist and educator Friedl Dicker-Brandeis taught children to draw in circumstances designed to extinguish freedom and individuality.
Her classes offered attention, expression and a momentary opening beyond confinement. Before her deportation to Auschwitz, Friedl entrusted thousands of the children’s drawings to others in Terezín. Their survival allows individual voices—including Jiří’s—to reach us today.
Prague · Terezín · September 2026
Following Jiří.
The project led from the surviving drawing into archives, places and personal encounters—from Jiří’s home in Prague to Terezín, where his name remains among those of the children who did not return.
The record
Jiří was deported from Prague to Terezín on 14 December 1941. On 4 October 1944, he was transported from Terezín to Auschwitz.
- Born
- 15 August 1935
- Prague → Terezín
- Transport M · No. 400
- Terezín → Auschwitz
- Transport En · No. 76
All photographs: Dan Reisner
Documentary in progress
The search becomes part of the work.
Director Laura Bialis
The film follows Jiří’s Flower through archive, sculpture and place. Interviews with curators, historians and educators ask how one child’s drawing can preserve an individual life within the enormity of the Holocaust—and how that life can continue to speak in the present.
Research and production ongoing
Toward Sarasota
The drawing enters public space.
The table, chairs, vase and flower are enlarged and translated into a permanent sculptural environment. The intimacy of Jiří’s image becomes a place where families and future generations may pause, remember and encounter one child’s presence.
Bronze · Stainless steel · Granite · Stone
A living project
This story continues.
New material will be added as the sculpture is installed, the documentary develops, and Jiří’s Flower becomes part of the Children’s Memorial Garden in Sarasota.
Begin a conversation →