We've been for the last two years working with
the local Jewish community to create a record of
the Jewish cemetery here in Victoria. The students
are engaged in a lot of different hands on
activities. All non invasive, non destructive to
create a complete record of the cemetery for the
synagogue and for the
community as a whole.
What we're doing today is
for these past few weeks is working on
trying to give the Jewish cemetery a full record
of everyone here and updating everything.
The interesting thing about this classes
didn't really cost anything to do actual
fieldwork and get experience with it. So this is
good for any student that wants to get
their hands dirty and get into it and learn a lot
of things. The work that we're doing here is great
for me because it helps me. It will be a
applicable to several different areas of my
education. I can take the work that I've done
here on modern
monuments and apply things like the photography
we're doing to my other area of interest in
classical studies.
Working with the Jewish community
great because a lot of people will just come
through the cemetery and ask what we're doing.
And we'll let them know and they're so
enthusiastic about it about so many other
ancestors and people they've known.
You get to know the community members as well,
especially with this one being so small.
I've had people come in here and they tell me
stories about these people and I feel, like I
know them because
you just you're working with them every single
day. There's two ladies that were actually in
the same concentration camp.
And this one lady gave the other one her lipstick,
because she looked too malnourished. So as to liven
her up and brighten up and that's actually
what saved her life one of the days.
And they ended up meeting each other back in
Victoria and they were best friends
which is just absolutely amazing.
I've been truly honored to be working with a
phenomenal community of people from the Jewish
community, the rabbi, the cemetery director,
the people in general have been working brilliantly
alongside my students and it's been very
empowering not just for me but for the students
as a whole.
There are
I so many chances that you get to take
just by being a student at UVic.  I'm pretty
pretty happy here.
