Garden of the Missing
Conceived the idea of the garden, initiated the building of the Wall of Names of Israel’s fallen whose burial place is unknown as the garden’s central feature, authored the garden’s program, participated in the garden’s design
Gan Hane’edarim commemorating Israel’s fallen whose burial place is unknown was built on the site of the historical MIA Plot in the military cemetery on Mount Herzl. To the north, the garden borders the memorial for the sailors who went down with the submarine INS Dakar in the Mediterranean in 1968, en route to Israel, which was discovered thirty-one years later on the seabed. The names of the sixty-nine sailors are inscribed on the Wall of Names.
This memorial was built in the center of the garden, listing the names of the hundreds of Israel’s fallen, within and outside its borders, whose burial place is unknown. In a grove in the northern part of the garden, more than two-hundred headstones commemorate missing soldiers, including War of Independence MIAs (1948), Yom Kippur War MIAs (1973), pilots, sailors, and others.
Every year, on the seventh day of the Hebrew month of Adar, which, according to tradition, is the date of Moses’s death, the official state ceremony commemorating MIAs in all Israel’s wars, is held in the garden.
Gan Hane’edarim was planned by Jerusalem-based landscape architects Shlomo Aronson and Anat Sade, and was officially opened to the public in 2004.
