Yad Vashem

Yad Vashem occupies 45 acres on Jerusalem’s Mount of Remembrance, where museums and monuments stand alongside institutions devoted to collecting evidence, studying the Holocaust and teaching its history.[2] The Mount of Remembrance, or Har Hazikaron, is a ridge on Jerusalem’s western outskirts, near Mount Herzl.[4][5] The campus includes the Museum Complex, Hall of Remembrance, Valley of the Communities and Children’s Memorial, as well as archival, research and educational facilities.[2]

The institution’s mandate joins remembrance of murdered Jews with commemoration of the communities and institutions destroyed during the Holocaust.[2] It also encompasses the experiences of ghetto inhabitants and resistance fighters, Jewish efforts to preserve dignity and culture, and the actions of non-Jews who risked their lives to rescue Jews.[6] Its responsibilities extend beyond maintaining a memorial site: they include collecting, examining and publishing testimony, establishing commemorative projects and promoting shared remembrance.[6]

The biblical phrase underlying the name Yad Vashem connects remembrance with the preservation of a person’s name: “And to them will I give in my house and within my walls a memorial and a name … that shall not be cut off.”[2] The institution pursues the recovery of victims’ names and personal histories through Pages of Testimony, archival research and its publicly searchable database.[2] Its museum likewise presents Holocaust history through Jewish and personal perspectives, using victims’ possessions, writings and documents together with survivor testimony.[2]

Mordechai Shenhavi began formulating the idea for a permanent memorial during the Holocaust itself.[7] In August 1942, while visiting Kibbutz Beit Alfa, the Zionist activist wrote initial notes about commemorating the Jewish people’s losses and catastrophe.[7] The following month he proposed a public enterprise that would remember both the destruction of Diaspora Jewry and Jews fighting in Allied armies, linking remembrance with Jewish heroism.[7] The proposal was not immediately adopted, as the Yishuv had not yet grasped the catastrophe’s dimensions.[7]

On 25 May 1945, Shenhavi published a renewed plan for a “Yad Vashem Memorial for Destroyed Diaspora Jewry.”[8] A joint meeting of the Jewish National Council and National Institutions in June recommended a Jerusalem center with a registry of victims’ names, memorials to destroyed communities and ghetto fighters, an exhibition about concentration and extermination camps, and recognition of the Righteous Among the Nations.[8] The Zionist Executive Committee approved the proposal in August 1945.[8] Plans for lasting remembrance also received approval at the General Zionist Council’s first postwar meeting in London in 1945, with an institution established under the Va’ad Le’ummi.[1]

The Yad Vashem Enterprise began operating on 18 May 1946 in a three-room apartment at 27 King George Street in Jerusalem.[8] It collected documentation brought by survivors and books donated or sent from Europe.[8] Dr. Sara Friedlander, a survivor of the Kastner train, directed its archives and finances and helped establish the archival collection.[8] In July 1947, Yad Vashem and the Hebrew University’s Institute of Jewish Studies convened a World Congress for Research on the Holocaust and Heroism in Jerusalem, bringing together more than 200 delegates and guests.[9]

After Israel’s establishment, education and culture minister Ben-Zion Dinur proposed a remembrance authority on Jerusalem’s Mount of Remembrance.[1] Shenhavi renewed his efforts with government assistance in 1950 and drafted a legislative proposal in early 1952.[8] The government approved the bill in March 1953, and the Knesset unanimously approved its first reading on 18 May.[8] The Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance (Yad Vashem) Law was enacted on 19 August 1953, establishing a memorial authority in Jerusalem.[5][8]

The law’s commemorative scope included murdered Jews; destroyed families, communities and institutions; Jewish military and underground fighters; the resistance of ghetto inhabitants; and efforts to preserve human dignity and Jewish culture.[6] It also encompassed attempts to reach Eretz Israel, efforts to rescue survivors, and non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews.[6] Alongside documentation and memorial projects, the law authorized commemorative citizenship for victims and representation of Israel in international commemorative enterprises.[6]

Implementation began in early December 1953, with an initial meeting in the education minister’s office.[9] An agreement with the Jewish National Fund provided for the use of its international networks to register victims and Jewish fighters.[9] Early plans included buildings near Mount Herzl, a library and archive, research into resistance and antisemitism, a history of European Jewry’s destruction, and records of destroyed communities.[9] The cornerstone of the first building was laid in 1954; the two-story building brought together archives, a library, a research institute, a scientific committee and a permanent exhibition in its corridors.[9]

The original complex opened in 1957, and the Yizkor Hall opened in 1961.[10][9] By 1971, the campus included a Pillar of Heroism, Hall of Remembrance, museum, synagogue, exhibition halls and Hall of Names, with separate facilities for archives, library and administration.[5] During the preceding year, approximately a quarter of a million people had visited, with young people forming a growing share of visitors.[5] A substantially expanded Holocaust History Museum and redesigned Hall of Names were inaugurated in spring 2005.[11]

The institution’s founding involved significant debate about the purposes and language of Holocaust remembrance.[8][9] One question was whether its work should connect the Holocaust to the reestablishment of the Jewish people in the Land of Israel; the adopted focus was the Holocaust and the destruction of Jewish communities rather than the rebuilding of the Jewish homeland.[8] Legislative arguments also concerned religious language, the terms “Nazis” and “Germans,” and the relationship between “revolt” and the broader concept of Jewish “heroism.”[9]

The Pages of Testimony project began in 1954, inviting relatives and friends to record the lives of Holocaust victims.[12] These forms preserve details including a victim’s name, date and place of birth, prewar residence, profession, parents and spouse, and the place and time of death; photographs are included when available.[1] They serve as symbolic tombstones and are preserved in Yizkor files as well as digitized in the Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names.[1] Survivors, relatives and friends submitted the first 800,000 Pages during the 1950s.[13]

A “Room of Names” opened on the Mount of Remembrance campus in 1968, holding handwritten forms in black Yizkor files arranged alphabetically in Hebrew.[11] By 1971, approximately two million forms had been recorded and were kept in a temporary Hall of Names, where visitors could also submit testimony.[5] A purpose-designed Hall of Names was inaugurated in 1977 in the presence of Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Yad Vashem International Council chairman Joseph Burg.[11] Nearly 1.1 million Pages were microfilmed in 1984–1985 to improve searches and provide backup copies.[11]

In 1990, the Hall of Names expanded its work to include names found in deportation, camp and ghetto records.[11] Computerization of these sources began in late 1991, and almost one million names had been computerized by the end of 1998.[11] Annual collection of Pages of Testimony rose from an average of 15,000 in the 1980s to approximately 35,000 in the 1990s after the fall of the Iron Curtain.[11]

A major digitization project in 1999 undertook to computerize more than 1.1 million Pages and scan all 1.6 million paper forms then collected.[11] From February through May, 1,000 staff and 100 information-technology and content specialists worked in two shifts at sites in Jerusalem and Be’er Sheva.[11] A worldwide collection campaign began on 8 May 1999; approximately 147,000 Pages arrived during April and May, around 380,000 by the end of the year, and another 70,000 in 2000.[11] More than 80 percent of Pages received during the campaign contained victims’ names not previously recorded.[11]

By 2000, the database contained close to 2.5 million victims’ names.[11] On 22 November 2004, close to three million names became freely accessible online in English and Hebrew; Russian-language access followed in 2007.[11] The online launch drew on five decades of collecting information and a decade of work by approximately 1,500 people converting written testimony into digital information.[14]

The database has also helped reconnect surviving relatives.[15] In a case reported in 2006, Hilda Shlick’s grandchildren discovered a Page of Testimony submitted in her memory by a man identifying himself as her brother.[15] Their search led to her brothers in Canada, and one traveled to Israel to meet her after more than six decades of separation.[15] The reunited siblings spoke in Yiddish.[15]

In November 2025, the database reached five million names after seven decades of collecting evidence.[3] Approximately 2.8 million names had been gathered through Pages of Testimony, a collection recognized by UNESCO’s Memory of the World program in 2013.[3] Other evidence included letters, diaries, Nazi records, deportation lists, censuses and trial materials, as well as cemetery gravestones and synagogue memorial plaques.[3] The collection also contained hundreds of thousands of personal files concerning victims’ lives and fates.[3]

Artificial intelligence and machine-learning tools became part of the search through documentation too extensive for manual research alone.[16] In May 2024, Yad Vashem said it had developed AI-powered software to search records for victims whose names were missing from memorials; at the time, it had compiled information on 4.9 million individuals.[16] In 2025, the institution estimated that these tools could help recover another 250,000 names.[16] Nevertheless, hundreds of thousands of victims may remain unidentified because no record of their murder survives.[3]

Yad Vashem’s archival holdings include more than 210 million documentary pages, over 131,000 survivor testimonies and over 500,000 photographs.[13] The collections document victims’ lives and fates, perpetrators and collaborators, persecution and extermination, bystanders and rescuers.[13] Their main chronological focus extends from the early 1930s through 1945, while additional materials address prewar Jewish life, survivors’ postwar experiences and the Holocaust’s continuing ramifications.[13]

The documentary collections include Jewish-organizational and official records, original Nazi documents, historical-commission materials and legal evidence gathered for proceedings including the Nuremberg and Eichmann trials.[13] Collecting work includes obtaining documents from Europe and North Africa and filming survivor testimony.[2] The Testimonies Department was among the institution’s earliest departments: written testimony collection began in the late 1940s, audio recording followed, and videotaping began in 1989.[13] The archives also acquire copies of testimony recorded by other organizations.[13]

A 1971 survey illustrates the scale and variety of earlier archival work.[5] Acquisitions came from institutions and private collections in several countries and included original records and microfilm, Nazi and Jewish records, war-crimes legal materials, oral testimony, memoirs and diaries.[5] During the year surveyed, the Tel Aviv branch recorded and copied 112 testimonies and obtained 14 memoirs and diaries.[5] Archivists examined 224 microfilm reels of Nuremberg trial material comprising 250,000 pages, while researchers received access to 1,679 files of testimony and documentation.[5]

The library holds a comprehensive collection of published Holocaust-related material.[2] Its holdings encompass Holocaust literature, antisemitism and racial theories; by 1971, it included approximately 400 Yizkor books commemorating destroyed Jewish communities.[5] Research and publishing projects included the Pinkas Hakehillot encyclopedia of Jewish communities and joint bibliographic work with YIVO.[5] A separate research guide reported more than 112,000 library titles in 50 languages and approximately 4,000 newspapers and periodicals.[17]

The International Institute for Holocaust Research advances scholarship through research projects, workshops, conferences and publications.[2] Specialized centers study the Holocaust in the former Soviet Union, Poland and Germany, alongside the aftermath of the Shoah and its worldwide commemoration.[2] The Institute publishes the biannual journal Yad Vashem Studies and approximately 30 books annually, including research studies, encyclopedias, survivor memoirs and diaries.[2]

The Visual Center provides access to Holocaust-related cinema and survivor testimony.[2] Its resources include documentaries, feature films, family videos, animated films and news items, with facilities for database research and viewing.[2] These audiovisual resources supplement the institution’s documentary, photographic and published collections.[2]

The International School for Holocaust Studies develops educational activities and materials for students and educators in Israel and abroad.[2] Hundreds of thousands of teachers and students attend educational programs and intensive seminars each year, while tens of thousands participate in online courses and activities in their home countries.[2] Programs include international educator conferences, preparatory courses for students and IDF officers traveling to Poland, and an interactive Learning Center.[2]

The educational curriculum addresses Jewish life before the war, daily life during the Holocaust and survivors’ return to life afterward.[1] Teacher courses have been offered in eight languages in addition to Hebrew.[1] Earlier educational work included teacher seminars, pupil guidance, mobile exhibitions, memorial assemblies and student lectures.[5] In 1971, 1,082 schools participated in a project preserving the memory of Jewish communities, with approximately 300 more expected to join during the following school year.[5]

The Holocaust History Museum is the central component of Yad Vashem’s Museum Complex.[2] Designed by Moshe Safdie, it covers more than 4,200 square meters, largely underground, with a linear, spike-shaped structure cutting through the mountain.[18] A skylight rises above the ridge, galleries branch from the central shaft, and the exit opens toward the valley.[18] The museum presents a narrative with a beginning, middle and end, emphasizing Jewish experiences and individual victims through original artifacts, personal possessions and survivor testimony.[18]

The museum that opened in 2005 was four times the size of its predecessor and contained more than 2,500 exhibits, including objects, documents, films, literature, diaries, letters and art.[19] Planning and construction took ten years and cost approximately $40 million.[19] Its chronological and thematic presentation begins with Jewish life in prewar Europe and extends through the Holocaust into the early postwar years.[19] Ninety personal stories were integrated into the exhibition, and more than 100 screens showed survivor testimony.[19]

Safdie designed the central route with interruptions marking turning points in the historical narrative.[19] The prism-like building enters the mountain from the south and emerges on its northern slope, opening toward daylight and the Jerusalem hills.[19] Its galleries combine skylights, dim exhibition spaces and artifact-filled trenches to guide the visitor’s passage.[10]

The historical narrative ends at the Hall of Names, which serves both as a repository for Pages of Testimony and a memorial to murdered Jews.[11] The redesigned Hall opened with the new museum complex in spring 2005.[11] Approximately 2.7 million original Pages are housed in a temperature- and humidity-controlled environment, while a neighboring computer center enables database searches.[11] A cone-shaped installation displays 600 photographs against a background of Pages of Testimony.[20] Portraits and testimony appear beneath a ten-meter-high cone, reflected in water below in remembrance of victims whose names remain unknown.[10]

The Hall of Remembrance is a stark, tent-roofed concrete structure containing an eternal flame and a crypt with victims’ ashes.[4] Its floor bears the names of 21 Nazi extermination camps, concentration camps and killing sites in central and eastern Europe.[4] A 1971 description recorded hewn basalt walls, a vault near the Eternal Light and commemorative ceremonies held almost daily.[5] The surrounding open space hosted the annual remembrance assembly on 27 Nisan.[5]

The nearby Children’s Memorial commemorates approximately 1.5 million Jewish children murdered in the Holocaust.[4] The Valley of the Communities occupies 2.5 acres excavated from natural bedrock.[1] Its walls bear the names of more than 5,000 Jewish communities destroyed during the Holocaust, together with some communities that suffered but survived.[1] The Memorial to the Deportees incorporates an original cattle car used to transport Jews to death camps, standing on a track extending toward the Judean hillside.[1]

The Museum of Holocaust Art displays works from an extensive collection of Holocaust-related artworks, while the Exhibitions Pavilion accommodates rotating special exhibitions.[2] The campus synagogue serves private and public prayer and memorial services.[2] Its permanent display includes Torah arks and other Judaica recovered from destroyed European synagogues.[2]

Yad Vashem hosts Israel’s official Holocaust Remembrance Day events with survivors, their families and public figures.[2] It holds dozens of commemorative events each year, many organized with survivor associations.[2] The central state ceremony for Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day takes place on 27 Nisan.[4] The institution’s creation followed the Knesset’s 1951 resolution establishing that date as Holocaust Memorial Day and preceded the April 1955 legislation concerning the observance, implemented in 1959.[21]

Recognition of non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews is part of Yad Vashem’s statutory mandate.[6] Rachel Auerbach, then director of the Testimonies Department, proposed commemorating rescuers through tree planting in 1955.[20] The first such ceremony on the Mount of Remembrance took place in May 1962, with honorees’ names displayed on plaques beneath the trees.[20]

A formal project recognizing the Righteous Among the Nations began in 1963.[1] A public commission examines documentation, including evidence from survivors and other eyewitnesses, before deciding whether to award the title.[1] Its considerations include rescuers’ motives and the degree of danger they faced, and recognition concerns rescue undertaken without seeking reward or compensation.[5][1]

By June 1971, 850 people had received the title; by January 2006, the total was 21,310.[5][1] The institution’s overview records 27,000 recognized individuals, with hundreds of additional recognitions each year as further rescue accounts emerge.[2] Honorees are commemorated through trees on the Mount of Remembrance or names engraved on the Wall of Honor in the Garden of the Righteous Among the Nations.[2] Their stories are also preserved in an encyclopedia and an online searchable database.[2]