Elsa Pollak, All That Remained, 1985-1989, Fired Clay

Elsa Pollak was born in Czechoslovakia, and studied art and ceramics in Vienna. In 1944 she was deported to Auschwitz. After her liberation from the camp in 1945 she continued her studies, and in 1962 she emigrated to Israel where she lives and works.

The pile of shoes created by Elsa Pollak is a reminder of the mountains of shoes which were left in the death camps after their owners were murdered. The artist has used a private possession to express a personal tie with the victims. By its form and shape, each shoe testifies to its deceased owner: the shoes of a little child, the shoes of a woman who was a fastidious dresser, the shoes of a man which have been worn out beyond recognition. The artist commemorates the memory of the murdered men, women and children by creating a model of their shoes. Each shoe is unique, but they are heaped in a pile, expressing the joint fate of all Jews, despite their differences. The shoes are all that remained of their owners. All That Remained constitutes a powerful dialogue between the anonymity of the collective and the uniqueness of the individual, in the shadow of the Holocaust.