In 2023 CHES began to work with a group of volunteers in the Through Their Eyes program. It has quickly become clear that there are still many very important artifacts that deserve to be shared with the community. Thus we began the work of creating the Virtual Holocaust Museum 2.0.

Based on the success of the original 2018 Pop-Up Museum project CHES is continuing the effort to preserve additional artifacts which will populate Phase II of our Virtual Museum project. On November 4th, 2018 Temple Israel was the scene of a “Pop-Up Museum” with a display of Holocaust artifacts submitted by Holocaust survivors and their family members. Rabbi Morais of Temple Israel was behind the idea for the Pop-Up Museum. Artifacts, documents, letters, books, movies, short videos, a Tora Scroll, and a Tallit rescued from a synagogue in Berlin and more were part of the Pop Up Museum.

As a result of the success of the Pop-Up Museum, a Holocaust Virtual Museum was inaugurated on November 15th, 2020. The collection of artifacts in the Virtual Museum belong to Ottawa-area Holocaust survivors and their families. In total, there were 48 objects collected in the collection, grouped into 9 separate categories.

The new Virtual Holocaust Museum Phase II will continue to expand the original collection with the precious heirlooms of Ottawa descendants of Holocaust survivors. This collection reflects the diversity of Ottawa’s descendants’ families’ experiences during the Holocaust, is meant to help future research of the Holocaust and combat Holocaust distortion.