Last Folio: A Living Monument to the Holocaust

2 minute read

Photographer Yuri Dojc’s exhibit, Last Folio: A Photographic Journey with Yuri Dojc, is on view in the United States for the first time, showing at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City through late summer 2011.

Yuri Dojc began working on the Last Folio project after meeting a Holocaust survivor in 1997. A successful commercial photographer, Dojc originally began his career in photography after emigrating from Slovakia to Canada in 1969. So moved by his meeting with the survivor, he returned to his homeland and began the Last Folio project. Dojc began making portraits of Slovakia’s last living Holocaust survivors, then moved on to documenting abandoned synagogues, Jewish cemeteries, and other fragments of the country’s Jewish past.

In 2006, Dojc came across an abandoned school in Bardejov, Slovakia. The school, he later discovered, had not been occupied since the day in 1942 when its students were taken to concentration camps. Left behind were shelves upon shelves of children’s schoolbooks, now serving as a poignant reminder of life interrupted. Dojc decided that still life portraits of the books should serve as the centerpiece of the Last Folio project because of the place books play in the Jewish faith tradition.

Dojc believes that the books represent a monument to the people who don’t have monuments. “As an artist I feel fortunate to be able to express myself though these photos, and to be able to bring the past to the present.”

In 2006, Dojc began a collaboration with filmmaker Katya Krausova, and together, they created the Last Folio exhibition, currently on display at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City. In addition to over 80 prints, and some small artifacts, the exhibit also includes a documentary created by Krausova that follows Dojc through Slovakia.

Dojc told TIME Magazine that he feels it is impossible to complete this project.

“I cannot stop, he says. “You can bet that I will continue.”

A synagogue in Kosice, Eastern Slovakia Yuri Dojc
A Mikva in Bardejov, Eastern SlovakiaYuri Dojc
Mikvah in Bardejov, Eastern SlovakiaYuri Dojc
A synagogue in Vrutky, Central SlovakiaYuri Dojc
A synagogue in Sastin, Western SlovakiaYuri Dojc
Shelves of children's books left behind in a classroom in Bardejov in 1942, were discovered by Yuri Dojc in March 2006Yuri Dojc
A school room as it was first discovered by Dojc and Krausova in March, 2006Yuri Dojc
Books found at the Bardejov school, 2006-2009Yuri Dojc
Books found at the Bardejov school 2006 - 2009Yuri Dojc
Books found at the Bardejov school, 2006-2009Yuri Dojc
A book found at the school in BardejovYuri Dojc
A book found at the Bardejov school. In the center is the prominent Hebrew word Hanishar which means what remainsYuri Dojc
A detail of a book found at the school in BardejovYuri Dojc
A book found at the school in BardejovYuri Dojc
A satchel found in the attic at the school in BardejovYuri Dojc
A tefilin scroll found in the attic of the school in BardejovYuri Dojc
A fragment of a prayer book found in the prayer room at the school in BardejovYuri Dojc
A broken tombstone of a famous Rabbi at the cemetery in HuncovceYuri Dojc
A single shoe found at the school in BardejovYuri Dojc

More Must-Reads from TIME

Contact us at letters@time.com