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The idea of establishing a memorial in Palestine for the Jews who
fell victim to the Holocaust was conceived during World War II, when
reports were received of the mass murder of Jews in the
German-occupied countries. It was first proposed in September 1942,
at a board meeting of the Jewish National Fund, by Mordecai
Shenhavi, a member of Kibbutz Mishmar ha-Emek. Shenhavi proposed
"the commemoration of the Holocaust in the Diaspora, and of the
participation of the Jewish people in the Allied armies." He
also proposed the name "Yad Vashem" (lit., "a
monument and a name"), from Isaiah 56:5: "I will give
them, in my house and in my walls, a monument and a name, better
than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that
shall never be effaced."
When the war came to an end and the full extent
of the catastrophe was revealed, Shenhavi's proposal gained
momentum. On May 2, 1945, he submitted it to the Jewish National
Institutions in Jerusalem, under the title "Yad Vashem
Foundation in Memory of the Lost Jewries in Europe--Outline of a
Plan for the Commemoration of the Diaspora." The proposal was
made public on May 25. This led to a joint meeting of the Jewish
National Council (Va'ad Le'ummi) and the National Institutions on
June 4, at which Shenhavi's and other proposals were discussed. The
meeting recommended the adoption of Shenhavi's proposal, including
the establishment of a center in Jerusalem to consist of an eternal
light for the victims; a registry of their names; a memorial for the
destroyed Jewish communities; a monument for the fighters of the
ghettos; a memorial tower in honor of all the Jewish fighters
against the Nazis; a permanent exhibit on the concentration and
extermination camps; and a tribute to the "righteous among the
nations." The proposal also recommended the planting of
memorial forests and the building of educational institutions for
the children of the survivors.
The plan was discussed at a Zionist meeting in
London on August 15, 1945, and it was decided to set up a
provisional board, made up of the Zionist leaders David Remez (as
chairman), Shlomo Zalman Shragai, and Baruch Zuckerman, in addition
to Shenhavi. For about a year negotiations continued between the
National Institutions, the Hebrew University, and the Chief
Rabbinate of Palestine, centering mostly on the plan's financial and
operational aspects. In February 1946 Yad Vashem opened an office in
Jerusalem and a branch office in Tel Aviv. On June 1, 1947, it
convened its first plenary session, and the following day the plan
of "Yad Vashem for the Diaspora" was put on public
exhibition. On July 13 and 14, 1947, the First Conference on
Holocaust Research was held at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
At the conference it was decided that the Holocaust documentation
center would be located in Jerusalem, and that a thirty-one-member
council and a scholarly committee would be set up. The outbreak of
the Israeli War of Independence in May 1948, however, brought Yad
Vashem operations to an almost complete standstill.
In 1950, when the fighting had come to an end and
armistice agreements had been signed, Shenhavi resumed his
activities in behalf of the establishment of Yad Vashem, now
addressing himself to the institutions of the state of Israel. He
asked that priority be given to resuming the registration of
Holocaust victims, on which a start had been made earlier, and that
a law be enacted granting commemorative citizenship to the victims.
The Israeli government appointed a special committee for this and
the subject also came up for discussion at the Twenty-third Zionist
Congress, which met in Jerusalem in the summer of 1951. The jurists
who had been asked to deal with the legal aspects of the citizenship
proposal had not arrived at a clear-cut decision, and the government
therefore decided to continue preparations for the establishment of
a Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority that would also put the
citizenship issue on the agenda. In 1952 the minister of education, Professor Ben-Zion Dinur, presented to
the Knesset (the Israeli parliament) a bill for the establishment of the
authority, and on May 18, 1953, the Knesset unanimously passed the
Yad Vashem Law, establishing the Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance
Authority, with all the members rising and observing a minute of
silence in memory of the Holocaust victims. The law passed its final
reading on August 19, and was published on August 28, 1953.
The Yad Vashem Law states that the authority is established to commemorate the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis and their
helpers; the Jewish communities and their institutions that had been
liquidated and destroyed; the valor and heroism of the soldiers, the
fighters of the underground, and the prisoners in the ghettos; the
sons and daughters of the Jewish people who had struggled for their
human dignity; and the "Righteous among the Nations" who
had risked their lives in order to save Jews. Among the tasks that
the law assigns to Yad Vashem are to establish memorial projects; to
gather, research, and publish testimony of the Holocaust and its
heroism and to impart its lessons; to grant commemorative
citizenship to the victims; and to represent Israel on international
projects aiming at perpetuating the memory of the victims of the
Holocaust and of World War II.
The authority was set up as a corporate institution, administered by
a council and a directorate. Under the law, the government undertook
to
participate in the costs of its construction and maintenance, but
the authority was also permitted to accept allocations, income, and
contributions from other sources. The law also provided that the
minister of education issue regulations for the authority's method of operation.
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