HALIFAX -- The second week of November marks Holocaust Education Week, and members of the Atlantic Canada Jewish community are working to ensure that history isn’t overshadowed during another historic time.

The annual awareness campaign aims to spread education about tragic events of the past, to combat present and future hate.

Researchers and members of the Jewish community are working tirelessly to ensure to ensure Holocaust Education Week would continue this year despite the COVID-19 pandemic, with many events shifting online.

“I feel it’s very difficult for me to engage in this work, but it’s really important to just keep this conversation going, because there’s so much to be said in a different context about this difficult history of genocide,” says Solomon Nagler, a professor at NSCAD and artist behind one of this week’s Holocaust Education exhibits.

This year’s annual awareness campaign looks different with many events shifted online, but Nagler’s ‘Speculative Cartographies’ project is on display at the Halifax Central Library.

The project explores and documents five unmarked mass graves of Jewish victims of the Holocaust.

Nagler and artist Angela Henderson travelled to Poland last year to map the areas and gather material.

“There are bodies still there, and in Jewish law, it’s really important that you protect these spaces and commemorate these spaces in some way,” says Nagler. “Very sadly, the majority of Jews that died in the concentration camps, there bodies no longer exist, they were incinerated.”

“I think the Holocaust is something that, in some ways, it’s all of our history,” adds Angela Henderson. “So it’s important to talk about these things and through artistic lenses, sometimes there’s a different way to sort of speak about these difficult topics.”

The Atlantic Jewish Council says it’s crucial explore new educational topics every year.

While they had to shift their thinking for their 2020 plans, they were able to reach a larger student audience through virtual events, with guest speakers including Holocaust survivor Judy Abrams.

“They had the opportunity to ask Judy questions during the live webinar, so although there was additional prepwork for this program, it was a more valuable experience for the students,” says Edna Levine, Atlantic Jewish Council Director of Community Engagement.

Levine encourages everyone to do their research on the Holocaust, including reading memoirs from survivors, and to never be afraid to ask questions.

“If we don’t constantly engage with history, we are absolutely doomed to repeat it,” says Levine.

One of the free events includes a family-friendly movie that can be live-streamed on the Atlantic Jewish Council website, while the self-guided exhibit at the Halifax Central Library will be on display until Nov. 15.

An effort to understand atrocities of the past, with the goal of creating a better future.