Down the road from Mount Herzl is a ridge called Har  Ha-Zikaron ( Mount of Remembrance).

Remembrance is the key theme of Modern Judaism, and Jerusalem has no shortage of memorials.

The two most important of these lie side by side on the western ridge of the city, as power testimony of the 2 events which altered the course of Jewish history in the 20^th century- the Holocaust and the creation of the State of Israel. Yad Vashem is striking memorial to the 6 millin Jews massacred by the Nazis. Daring in its design, a linear, triangular structure long  tunnel  like Toblerone container) stretching 160 m (525 ft) beneath a hillside, which to opens a panoramic terrace with vistas of the Judean mountains.

This is Israel’s great memorial and place of commemoration for the millions who perished in the Holocaust and whose graves, both known and unknown, are distant from these hills.

The idea of establishing Holocaust memorial in Palestine was first proposed in 1942, and the Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Authorithy, which runs it, was finally established in 1963. Today its archive holds 62 million pages of documents and 260 thousand photographs, its Library with 90,000 titles.

Yah Vahsem meaning “ a name and a place” from Isaiah 56:5 is an archive, research, institute, museum and above all a monument to commemorate and retain the memory of more than 6 million who died in the Nazi Holocaust. Over 20 monuments occupy this hillside site. The entrance is along Avenue of Righteous Among Nations, lined with plaques bearing the names of Gentiles, some 16,000 including Oskar Schindler,  who helped Jews. It is lined with trees planted  in tribute  to each individual gentile who  helped saved Jewish lives during the Nazi era- many of these heroes sacrifice their own lives and lives of their families. Those who helped save Anne Frank and her family in Amsterdam, Princess  Alice of Greece who hid a Greek Jewish family for a year in Athens.

The avenue leads to the new historical Museum designed by Moshe Safdie and inaugurated bin 2005. The museum is one long corridor carved into the mountain, with 10 exhibition halls, one dedicated to different chapter of the Holocaust.

The complex include a central chamber, Ohel Yizkor, or the Hall of Remembrance, which sits on the base of rounded boulders.  The heavy entrance gate to the the Hall is designed by 2 Israel leading sculptors, Bezalel Schatz and David Polombo- an abstract tapestry of jagged, twisted steel. Inside, an eternal flame flickers amid blocks of basalt stone rock  room like a crypt, engraved with the names of 21 death camps e.g Auswitz, Bergen-Belsen, Dachau..etc .  On the crest of the western slope of the Mount of Remembrance stands a 6m  high monument dedicated to the 1.5 million soldiers among the allied forces, partisans and ghettos fighters, at the bottom,a sculptured memorial for the 5,000 European Jewish communities that disappeared during World War II- called Valley of the Destroyed Communities.

The Hall of Names contain more than 3 million pages of testimony.  In the Children of the Holocaust, there is also a special memorial for the 1.5 m children who were murdered  by the Nazis- Most visitors spend between 1 to 3 hours in the complex. The last refurbishment in 2005, the new Yad Vashem uses the latest multimedia means to recount the horrifying story of the Jewish massacres from 1933 to 1945, and includes the world’s largest collection of Holocaust arts, comprising 10, 000 works , many of them on carefully preserved thin scraps of paper. Only the Apex of the building is above ground, forming a skylight. The grey concrete walls intensify the harshness of the structure, which gashes brutally through the Jerusalem hillside. The effect is powerful, and as the museum puts it: “Every visitor leaves Yad Vashem with a personal impression of an event that has universal dimensions”

Mount Herzl (Har Hertzel) sits on the high hill north of central Jerusalem, honors Viennese journalist Theodore Herzl, who founded the Zionist Movement between 1897 and 1904. His remains were transported to Jerusalem in 1949, and his simple black granite tomb marks  the summit of the mount. Yitzhak Rabin assassinated in 1995 was also buried here. On the northern ridge lies the graves of Israeli soldiers who died defending the state. It is the burial place of the 3 of Israel’s prime minister and also the country’s presidents as well as country’s main military cemetery.

The old Jewish tradition of Vehigadeta Lebincha ( “ and you will tell your children”) is much in evidence.

www.yadvashem.org.il.