I would like to share the beauty of Jewish postcards with the public, and to revive those long-ago days. I hope to recreate the atmosphere of the period of 80-100 years ago with photographs of ghettos, portraits and photographs of people.

In my opinion, postcards featuring Jewish subject matter are amongst the finest. In addition to their authentic beauty, they are informed by a sense of indelible grief, as they reflect a world that was all but destroyed and that disappeared almost without trace. Yet this world lives on in period photographs and postcards. Whenever I look at the postcards in my collection, I have the feeling that what they represent is not a lost world, just the past, and each postcard uniquely captures those long-ago days - yamim mikendem.

Frantisek Bányai, August 2000

Until the Second World War, Europe was home to an ancient and populous Jewish Diaspora. During the war, however, Europe was turned into a "Jewish cemetery" and Israel and the US became the main centres of Jewish life. Is the European Jewish Diaspora really an unrecoverable past? It is difficult to answer this question, as Jewish history is full of unexpected twists, with the decline of major centres of Jewish life, the emergence of new ones or the revival of old. Periods of utter desperation alternate with joyful expectations for the future, which is why Rabbinic tradition compares the people of Israel to the moon: just as the moon waxes and wanes, so the history of the Jewish nation is marked by alternating growth and decline. Perhaps sometime in the future, a new Jewish community will once again blossom in Europe and continue with the thousand-year legacy of past generations.

PhDr. Bedřich Nosek, August 2000