Spurensuche (German for "searching for traces") is a photographic journey through the Munsterland, a region in northwestern Germany, in search for traces of Jewish life. Although a relatively small geographical area of a little more than 3,500 square miles, nearly all of the 66 towns of the Munsterland today were once home to Jewish communities. These Jews were the so-called Landjuden, Jewish farmers that lived for century in this area of Germany and were a natural part of the identity of the Munsterland. This identity was destroyed in the Holocaust and only fragments of a once rich culture remained.
With the destruction of Jewish buildings by the Nazis, the memory of Jewish culture in Germany was meant to be eradiated. Nearly 70 years after the Kristallnacht Julian Voloj returns to document the last traces of a once rich culture. For Voloj, born in Muenster, the capital of the Munsterland, this project is a homecoming and new exploring of his own heritage, as a Jew and as a German.