The idea for a memorial called Yad Vashem arose while the Holocaust was still underway. In 1942, Mordecai Shenhavi of the Jewish National Fund proposed an institution that would preserve the names and memory of Jews being murdered under Nazi rule. The name came from Isaiah’s promise of a memorial and a name—yad vashem. Early planning continued after the war and the founding of Israel, as survivors, families, scholars, and public officials confronted the scale of destruction and the loss of entire communities, archives, homes, and cemeteries.

In 1953, Israel’s Knesset unanimously passed the Yad Vashem Law, establishing the Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem. Its mandate included commemorating six million murdered Jews, destroyed communities, resistance, and non-Jews who risked their lives to rescue Jews. The institution collected documents, photographs, artifacts, testimony, and Pages of Testimony intended to restore names and identities to individual victims. This work made remembrance inseparable from archival reconstruction and historical research rather than relying on a single monument.

A campus developed on the Mount of Remembrance beside Mount Herzl. The Hall of Remembrance created a ceremonial space around an eternal flame and a floor inscribed with names of killing sites. The Children’s Memorial commemorates approximately 1.5 million murdered Jewish children through reflected points of light and recited names. The Valley of the Communities evokes thousands of Jewish communities damaged or destroyed. Beginning in the 1960s, the Righteous Among the Nations program formally honored non-Jewish rescuers on the basis of documented evidence and defined criteria.

The present Holocaust History Museum, designed by Moshe Safdie, opened in 2005. Its long concrete prism cuts through the hillside, with galleries branching from a central route before opening toward a view of Jerusalem. Historical narrative is built around personal objects, testimony, photographs, documents, and individual lives, connecting Nazi policy and mass murder with the experiences of victims. The Hall of Names stores Pages of Testimony and symbolizes the continuing attempt to identify every murdered person, an effort that remains incomplete.

Yad Vashem operates simultaneously as memorial, museum, archive, research institute, educational center, and state authority. It trains educators, publishes scholarship, digitizes collections, records survivor testimony, and responds to changing forms of denial and distortion. Its design and official role have also generated debate about national memory, whose experiences receive emphasis, and how the Holocaust should be interpreted across generations. The institution’s enduring historical purpose is captured by its commitment to names: mass statistics are translated back into people, families, communities, choices, and evidence that can be studied as well as mourned.