The Valley of the Communities in Yad Vashem is a massive 2.5 acre monument literally dug out of natural bedrock. Over 5000 names of communities are engraved on its stone walls. Each name recalls a Jewish community which existed for hundreds of years; for the inhabitants, each community constituted an entire world. Today, in most cases, nothing remains but the name.
The Valley was excavated out of the earth. It is the monument uncovers and brings to light a thousand years of Jewish communal life that was suddenly destroyed during the Holocaust. The names of the communities are engraved on the 107 walls which roughly corresponds to the geographic arrangement of the map of Europe and North Africa.
The Valley of the Communities was established through the support of the American Society for Yad Vashem and its many partners.
Video of Valley of Communities
