MONTREAL – Leon Celemencki looked at the group of young adults heading to the World Youth Day celebration in Krakow, Poland, in July, asking about their planned side trip to the notorious Nazi concentration camp known as Auschwitz.

AURORA, ONT. – When a gang of pretty high school girls spot 87-year-old Max Eisen they all shout “Max!” and shuffle over for a hug and a chat with the man who showed them the inside of Auschwitz last summer.

VATICAN CITY - Members of the International Catholic-Jewish Liaison Committee said anti-Semitism was still thriving in the world and increasing Christian persecution demanded a stronger outcry.

One of the victims of the massacre in San Bernardino, Calif., was a Messianic Jew who had clashed with co-worker and shooter Syed Farook over religion and politics, including the Holocaust and the right of Israel to exist as a homeland for Jews.

LVIV, Ukraine - Ludvika Sarah Leah Schein, who survived the Holocaust, hadn’t been to her hometown in 70 years. But she still vividly remembers the day Germans came to Rava-Ruska.

TEL AVIV - A variation on the serious theme of Holocaust testimony has brought survivors and young Israeli students together in living rooms to celebrate life while remembering atrocities.

A friend who attended a commemoration Mass at a church in Montreal’s Villeray neighbourhood at the end of February e-mailed me this compelling observation shortly afterward.

TORONTO - “Historians don’t use right or wrong. Catholics do, but historians don’t,” said Catholic Holocaust scholar Suzanne Brown-Fleming.

As aging Holocaust survivors gathered at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to celebrate its 20th anniversary last year, a question hung in the air: How will the world remember the Holocaust — the Nazis’ systematic murder of six million Jews —  when the last survivors are gone?

OTTAWA - Arrested, forced to walk the death road, stripped of clothing and possessions, shot and then looted. This was the fate of many thousands of Holocaust victims across Eastern Europe whose tales went untold for generations — until Fr. Patrick Desbois, a French priest, unearthed the truth through painstaking interviews and archival research.

VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI said the annual Holocaust Remembrance Day calls humanity to work to overcome all forms of hatred and racism and to respect the dignity of each human person.

JERUSALEM - The late archbishop of Florence, Italian Cardinal Elia Dalla Costa, has been recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem for the role he played in a widespread network set up to rescue Jews following the Nazi occupation of Italy.

TORONTO - Pope John Paul II called for the healing and purification of memories in 1994 as he looked forward to the new millennium. The 32nd annual Toronto Holocaust Education Week will try to put that healing and purification in context by concentrating on a "Culture of Memory."

Schools, parishes, libraries, synagogues, theatres and art galleries will all take part in eight days of events examining the history of the Nazi plan which killed off six million Jews in the name of a "final solution." The Toronto event is the largest annual Holocaust education undertaking in the world.

The Nov. 1 to 8 program will open with a conversation at the Royal Ontario Museum between authors Nathan Englander and Sara Horowitz about how literature has dealt with the Holocaust, 7:30 p.m., Nov. 1. Englander is author of a short story collection called What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank and Horowitz teaches a course at Toronto's York University called "Imagining Anne Frank: The Girl, the Diary, the Afterlives."  

The closing night will feature the Artists of the Royal Conservatory ARC Ensemble performing music by composers who survived the death camps. The Nov. 8 performance at the Beth Tzedec Congregation synagogue will close with a candlelight commemoration of the 74th anniversary of Kristallnacht and Canadian war veterans honouring Remembrance Day.

Other notable events include a lecture by Polish theologian and sociologist Zbigniew Nosowski on efforts of the Polish Church to promote interest in Poland's Jewish roots and Polish Catholics who restore Jewish cemeteries at the University of St. Michael's College Nov. 7.

Reinhold Boschki, a University of Bonn professor of education and advisor to the German conference of Catholic bishops, speaks about the future of Holocaust education at Kehillat Shaarei Torah Nov. 7.

Sr. Audrey Gerwing will moderate a discussion following a screening of The Ninth Day, a film about Abbe Henri Kremer on a nine-day leave from the Dachau concentration camp at St. Gabriel of the Sorrowful Virgin Church Nov. 7.

The complete program can be downloaded at http://holocaustcentre.com. Most events are free.

Mississauga, Ont. - Wrapping your head around a number like 13 million can be a daunting task to say the least. But one history teacher from St. Marcellinus Secondary School is trying to make such a figure a reality for students while at the same time teaching them about the Holocaust.

It’s been three years since Susan Carey initiated The Penny Project, which aims to collect and roll one penny for each of the lives lost in the Holocaust.  The money, all $130,000, will be used to fund genocide education programs.

TORONTO - Yad Vashem is Israel’s official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust and to those non-Jews called the “Righteous Among the Nations” who helped save Jews at great personal risk. As a follow-up to this year’s Holocaust Education Week, the Canadian Society for Yad Vashem will be hosting an exhibition of 33 works by the Catholic Irish artist Thomas Delohery. The show is titled “Undeniable Truth.”