MARCH 2011

Photography from Slovakia to
Travel to the U.S. for the First Time

In 2006, the accomplished photographer Yuri Dojc encountered an abandoned school in Bardejov, Slovakia where time has stood still since the day in 1943 when its students were taken to concentration camps.

When Dojc arrived, the schoolbooks were still there. He found notebooks with corrections, school reports, and remarkably enough, later in his journey —a book once owned by his own grandfather. His stunning photographs of what remains of a once vibrant community will now, for the first time, be on view in the United States, when Last Folio: A Photographic Journey with Yuri Dojc opens at New York’s Museum of Jewish Heritage—A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, Edmond J. Safra Plaza, 36 Battery Place, New York on March 25. The opening date falls on the anniversary of the first transport of Slovak Jews — 1000 young girls — to Auschwitz in 1942.

Museum of Jewish Heritage Deputy Director Ivy Barsky said, “Sometimes it is the job of the history museum not only to tell history, but to make history felt. That is precisely what Yuri Dojc’s evocative photographs do.”

Dojc, a successful commercial photographer, encountered a Holocaust survivor at his father’s funeral in 1997. Their meeting resulted in his decision to take photographs of the Slovakian survivors, before it was too late. In his journey across the country he took more than one hundred and fifty portraits recording their stories and their faces. On his travels he also happened upon objects and buildings that once belonged to the Jewish community. Moved by their beauty despite their state of ruin, he decided to find and photograph additional evidence of the lost community. He followed in the path detailed in his father’s book on the country’s Jewish heritage and began the project that would become Last Folio.

“We all strive to leave something behind, a mark that remains after we’ve left. But there is almost nothing left of the people whose lives were cut short during the Holocaust. Photography allows me to build a private memorial to them. It is through these photos that I can pay homage to them and keep their memory alive. I can only hope that my images will speak to the visitors to this exhibition,” Dojc said.

The exhibition is specially designed for the Museum by Daniel Weil of Pentagram, one of today’s leading designers. Inspired by the shape of the Rotunda gallery, the exhibition’s floor plan is based on the Star of David, and features a centerpiece that is symbolic of a torah scroll.

Last Folio will be on view in the Rotunda Gallery through the late summer. Following the New York run, the exhibition will travel. For related public programs and more information call 646-437-4300.

 

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