Yad Vashem
Israel's official memorial to the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust, combining a museum, archive, and gardens honoring rescuers on the Mount of Remembrance.
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Established by an act of the Israeli Knesset in 1953, Yad Vashem was created as the world memorial to the Holocaust, tasked with commemorating the six million Jews murdered by Nazi Germany and its collaborators and with documenting the history of that genocide for future generations. Built on Jerusalem's Mount of Remembrance (Har HaZikaron), the site has grown over seven decades into a complex including the Holocaust History Museum, the Hall of Names, and the Children's Memorial, a hollowed cavern lit by candlelight and mirrors representing the estimated 1.5 million children killed.
Yad Vashem's grounds also include the Avenue of the Righteous Among the Nations, honoring non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the war, reflecting the institution's dual mission of mourning and moral instruction. As one of the most visited sites in Israel and a mandatory stop for many visiting heads of state, Yad Vashem is treated with deliberate solemnity rather than as a site of ghost lore; its role is explicitly to preserve testimony and combat denial. Its archives hold the names of more than 4.9 million individual victims collected from survivor and family testimony worldwide.
Current site status
Open memorial and museum