Yad La-Shiryon

Yad La-Shiryon stands at Latrun Junction in the Ayalon Valley, at a strategic crossroads where the Judean Hills and the Shephelah meet.[5][1] The site’s central structure is the former British Mandate police fortress, which dominates the crossroads.[5][1] Latrun itself sits on a hilltop overlooking the Ayalon Valley.[3] The memorial and museum honor fallen soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces’ Armored Corps and preserve the corps’ heritage.[2][1]

The collection and exhibits present the development of Israeli armor, the corps’ technological achievements, and the history of armored vehicles and warfare more broadly.[4] The site also houses a library, an amphitheater, an information center, and guided-tour facilities.[2][4] Some vehicles can be entered or climbed on, allowing visitors to compare early tanks with later models.[6][7]

The Latrun fortress and crossroads became a key position during the War of Independence because control of the area affected access to Jerusalem.[5] The British built the police fortress in 1940.[3] A British detention camp in the Latrun area held Jewish underground fighters and Yishuv leaders, including members of the Jewish Agency Executive in 1946.[5] When British forces left on May 14, 1948, the Arab Legion took control of the fortress.[3]

From Latrun, the Arab Legion controlled the western entrance to Jerusalem, which was being isolated while the city’s Jewish population faced a shortage of supplies. David Ben-Gurion considered Jerusalem’s relief essential to the new state and regarded capturing Latrun as important to that goal.[3] Israeli forces made repeated attempts to take the position. The first assault began before dawn under a full moon, which helped Jordanian forces see the advancing troops; the attackers were inexperienced in fighting a regular army and lacked air support.[3]

About 75 Israeli soldiers were killed in the first assault. Many of the dead were Holocaust survivors who had arrived from displaced-persons camps in Europe only days earlier; the cited account says they had no training and virtually none spoke Hebrew.[3] Three subsequent assaults also failed to capture Latrun. In June 1948, Israeli forces built the Burma Road as a bypass, helping deliver supplies and reinforcements to Jerusalem.[5][3]

Accounts describe Latrun’s status between the War of Independence and 1967 differently. One calls the area no-man’s land under United Nations supervision, while another describes the fortress as remaining under Jordanian control, with a no-man’s-land strip between Jordanian and Israeli positions.[5][6] Both accounts say Israel captured the site during the Six-Day War in June 1967, after which the road to Jerusalem reopened.[6][5]

The fortress was subsequently converted into a war museum, and a decision was made to establish an Armored Corps museum at Latrun.[2][8] A Sherman tank placed on a tower beside the station in 1979 marked an early step toward creating the memorial and heritage site; construction began in 1982 after a cornerstone brought from Sinai was laid.[1] The museum’s history is also connected to the Armored Corps itself, which began in May 1948 with the formation of Brigade 8 under Yitzhak Sadeh. Brigade 7 later fought at Latrun and helped open the Burma Road; the corps was established in the mid-1950s on the basis of Brigade 7.[2]

Yad La-Shiryon’s memorial complex commemorates fallen members of the Armored Corps. Its Wall of Names consists of metal panels engraved with the names of the dead and arranged by period.[2] The central plaza also includes the Gate of Valor and the Tower of Tears, as well as a daily Yizkor ceremony and a memorial recounting lives.[2] The Wall of Names bears the inscription “גבורתכם לנו שריון, רעותנו לכם נצח”.[2]

The museum’s components include a collection of tanks and armored fighting vehicles, models of early armored vehicles, a room tracing the Armored Corps’ career, a battle-heritage room, the Museum of the Jewish Soldier, a library, and an amphitheater.[2] Its displays include vehicles used in Israel’s wars as well as examples from other armies and periods of armored warfare.[6][4]

Published counts vary by date and description: one account describes more than 100 tanks used in Israel’s wars, while later reports count more than 150 tanks and armored vehicles at the site.[6][9] The collection includes early IDF vehicles, captured Russian tanks and personnel carriers, successive Merkava models, M4 Sherman tanks, and a British Cromwell.[9][10] The Sherman served as a mainstay of Israeli armor through the Six-Day War and remained in the IDF’s order of battle during the Yom Kippur War.[10]

The Cromwell on display was one of two taken from British Army stores near Haifa in 1948 by British soldiers sympathetic to Israel; these vehicles became the first vehicles of the IDF Armored Corps.[10] The collection also includes two German Panzer tanks that passed from the Wehrmacht to the Soviet Red Army, were transferred to Syria in the 1950s, and were later captured by the IDF on the Golan Heights.[11] Visitors can compare early tanks with newer Israeli-built vehicles and models imported from the United States.[6]

Yad La-Shiryon also houses the Chaim Herzog Museum of the Jewish Soldier in World War II. Named for Chaim Herzog, who served in the British Army during the war and later in the early IDF, the museum was officially opened in May 2024 on Victory in Europe Day at a ceremony attended by President Isaac Herzog.[12] Its creation received support from the Mike and Sofia Segal Foundation in memory of Yevsey Segal, Mike Segal’s father, who served as an artillery major in the Red Army and Navy.[12]

The project to establish a museum honoring Jewish veterans of World War II had been committed to by the Israeli government in 2002, with matching funds for donations. By 2019, about $6 million (NIS 22 million) had been directed toward collecting artifacts and testimonies and constructing a 2,200-square-meter building; the project had experienced funding and administrative delays at that time.[13] A later report gives estimates of around 500,000 Jews serving in the Red Army, a similar number in the U.S. Armed Forces, 400,000 in other Allied armed forces, and about 100,000 Jewish partisans.[12]

The site is also associated with the Israel National Trail. President Ezer Weizmann dedicated the trail at the memorial in April 1995 during Passover, when it was about 850 kilometers long; the dedication followed more than a decade of discussions and work marking its route.[14]

On May 1, 2025, a major fire in the Latrun area led to the evacuation of Yad La-Shiryon during a Memorial Day ceremony. The museum and its historical exhibits, including more than 150 tanks, survived almost without damage, although surrounding vegetation and parts of the site were affected; the site was to remain closed while repairs were made.[15]

A Maariv report about an incident on August 2, 2025, said that around 200 ultra-Orthodox demonstrators entered the memorial site and that the Wall of Names was desecrated. The report attributed criticism of the police response and descriptions of the incident to the site’s chair and management; the article did not include a police response.[16]

The memorial sits within a broader landscape that includes historical landmarks and birding activity. Latrun is described as a strategic hilltop in the Ayalon Valley and as the base of Israel’s main birding center; the memorial and the bird center are both associated with the area.[17] Yossi Leshem contrasted the memorial’s focus on heritage and conflict—“This is our past”—with a proposed bird center that he said would tell “the story of the future.”[17]