Yad Vashem Transport Memorial

The Yad Vashem Holocaust Transport Memorial is dedicated to victims of the Holocaust who were transported by railway car to the death camps. The memorial site which was inaugurated in 1995 to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the victory over Germany and the liberation from the camps engages the viewer with its horrifying simplicity.

A railway car given to Yad Vashem by the Government of Germany is positioned on the hillside retained by a massive concrete wall. The car, which was used during the Holocaust, stands at the tip of the replicated remains of a railway bridge, reaching towards the Wadi Valley and partially supported by the wall. Its steel beams twisted, the cantilevered bridge is suspended above the valley a journey into an abyss.

A small platform evokes the memory of a railway station. Visitors descend from the road to the base of the retaining wall carved with the testimony of a victim of the Nazi transports. From here the natural landscape falls away, down to the bottom of the valley.