This exhibition was of great importance to me, a sacred duty I am fulfilling towards my family, which on her father’s side, almost entirely perished in the Holocaust. The greatest loss for me was my brother sixteen-old brother Peter.

Even though I was only a young girl at the end of World War Two, the holocaust marked a decisive turn in my life, I saw and experienced things that are Important not only for myself, things that demand to be told.

Translating this message into a visual experience was a real challenge. Being unable to understand the reason, the purpose, and the monstrosity of the disaster of Holocaust. I have always turned to Nature, in which I feel the eternal continuity that stands against the unexplainable. Producing my own handmade paper has given me an unusual opportunity for the actual experience of creative work. While I am working, I can feel the energy of the material, its true hidden essence. But it has also given me an effective device for trying to give expression to my feeling and thoughts. It is both simple and complex, like life itself.

A glimpse of the past was revealed through the story of the house my aunt and uncle had built. Bayit, house in Hebrew, means both “physical home” ad “family”. By telling the story of this house, I can refer to a fraction of disaster that was the fate of the great majority of European Jews, I dare to say the Czech Jews in particular, and of my own family.

The beginnings of this house testify to joyous plans for the future. Then, it was violently cut off from the family property. Finally, it has been liberated. Though neglected and dilapidated, it tries to return to its legal owners, but they are no more among the living.

My aunt and uncle have been murdered, but their spirit remains here, in the house and its garden because the soul of people remains in the surroundings that they created.

My hope is that in this exhibition I succeeded in transmitting both the terrible destructive power of human infamy, and, in spite of everything, the hope for continuity in life.

Chava Pressburger