Garden of the Righteous Among the Nations

The Garden stands next to Yad Vashem’s Valley of the Communities, and its walls of honor bear the names of recognized Righteous Among the Nations.[5] Its Hebrew name is “Gan ḥaside umot ha-ʻolam”; alternative English names include “Garden of the Righteous” and “Garden of the Righteous among the Nations.”[6] The Garden is partially accessible to visitors with physical disabilities.[7]

Commemorating rescuers expresses the gratitude of Israel and the Jewish people, a responsibility included among Yad Vashem’s principal duties.[8] Recognition includes a specially minted medal bearing the recipient’s name, a certificate of honor, and inscription on the Garden’s Wall of Honor.[8] The title applies to non-Jews who risked their lives, freedom, or safety to rescue Jews during the Holocaust without expecting money or other rewards.[4]

Those commemorated belonged to a small minority who helped Jews by hiding them, supplying false papers, or assisting their escape.[9] Rescuers and the people they protected lived with the constant danger of discovery, including denunciation by neighbors or collaborators.[9] The Garden’s named inscriptions coexist with acknowledgment that some rescuers will remain anonymous.[5]

Rachel Auerbach, then director of Yad Vashem’s Testimonies Department, proposed commemorating the Righteous through tree planting in 1955.[4] Her proposal followed a ceremony she had attended the previous year at Kibbutz Gal’ed honoring Dutch rescuer Joop Westerweel; a forest in his memory had been planted near the kibbutz in 1947.[4]

Tree planting already carried commemorative and national symbolism in the Yishuv and Israel, where it was used to remember the dead, particularly people associated with the Zionist cause.[4] Trees also symbolized national revival and the idea of “striking roots” in the ancient homeland.[4]

The Avenue of the Righteous Among the Nations was dedicated on May 1, 1962, Holocaust Remembrance Day.[2] Foreign Minister Golda Meir represented the Israeli government, and the first eleven trees were planted along the path to the Hall of Remembrance on the Mount of Remembrance.[2] Rescuers from different countries participated in planting trees; the early ceremonies included invitations to rescuers to plant their own olive trees, with identifying plaques placed beneath them.[2][4]

By the mid-1990s, almost 14,000 people had received the Yad Vashem medal, and walls of honor supplemented the trees for honorees without an individual tree.[4] The Garden was dedicated on August 7, 1996, when close to 14,000 Righteous had been honored. Its walls record honorees without individual trees, and new names have continued to be added.[3] Wall inscriptions replaced tree planting because space for additional trees had run out.[10]

By 1989, close to 2,000 trees had been planted across the Mount of Remembrance. The Garden was expanded with new walls in 2011, and each spring it receives the names of people recognized during the preceding year.[3]

Awards are presented to rescuers or their next of kin either in Israel or in their countries of residence through Israel’s diplomatic representatives, with local government representatives attending the ceremonies.[11] Individual recognition and collective commemoration take different forms: the medal is awarded only to individuals, while groups or communities may be honored through monuments or plaques.[4]

A ceremony in the Garden honored Dutch rescuers Wessel and Ankje Ruwersma, who hid two-year-old Yehudit Levy in their home in Burum, in northern Holland, until April 1945.[12] Levy’s father was murdered in Auschwitz, while her mother, sister, and brother survived.[12] She regarded the Ruwersmas as her parents and, after her family emigrated to Israel, maintained contact with them and later with their children.[12]

Another personal encounter with the memorial took place on May 29, 2013, when survivor Vera Uglješić kissed Zlatan Uglješić’s name on a Garden wall.[3] Vera had been saved by rescuers and married Zlatan after the war.[3]

Recognition has also followed rescue by more than eight decades, as in the case of Jacqueline Mintz and Afram Kochba.[13] Born in the Netherlands during the war, Afram was entrusted by his biological mother to her Christian friend Jacqueline and Jacqueline’s partner, who agreed to raise him if his birth parents did not survive.[13] His biological parents were murdered near the end of the war; Yad Vashem’s committee subsequently recognized Jacqueline, with her name to be engraved on the Garden’s wall.[13]

At the time of that report, more than 28,700 people had been recognized as Righteous Among the Nations.[13] Poland, the Netherlands, France, and Ukraine had the largest numbers of recognized individuals, although country totals do not necessarily reflect the extent of rescue in each country.[13]

The Garden’s walls are distinct from the related Avenue of the Righteous Among the Nations, whose commemorative trees bear plaques recording honorees’ names and their countries of residence during the war.[5] In the early years, some rescuers or their families planted these trees themselves; later recognition is recorded through inscription on the Garden’s walls.[5]

Among those remembered along the Avenue is Zeniba Hardaga, recognized in 1985 and awarded a medal.[14] A tree was planted in her name, her husband’s name, and her father’s name, and her daughter Sarah Pechenz would stop beside the tree and its copper plaque bearing her mother’s name.[14]

A separate monument to anonymous rescuers stands in the Avenue rather than among the Garden’s walls of honor.[5] Rescue often took place clandestinely and left few traces: some rescuers were discovered and killed alongside the Jews they protected, while other acts of rescue were never reported.[5]

One account associated with the anonymous-rescuer memorial concerns Genja Klepfisz-Jodzka and a Polish woman known only as Miss Bronja.[5] Genja entrusted her seven-year-old son Michael to Bronja and, in a letter dated September 27, 1943, pleaded with her to care for him.[5] Genja later took Michael back, and they attempted to escape to Vienna but were caught and deported to Auschwitz in April 1944, where both perished.[5] Genja’s sister donated the letter to Yad Vashem; Bronja is remembered as one of the anonymous rescuers.[5]