Mount Herzl - The Connecting Path, Trail in Jerusalem, Israel

Mount Herzl - The Connecting Path is a 200-meter trail in Jerusalem that links two major memorial sites. The path runs between Yad Vashem, the Holocaust remembrance center, and Mount Herzl, the national cemetery where Israeli leaders and fallen soldiers are buried.

The idea for the path arose in 2002 in the Israel Defense Ministry's unit for commemorating soldiers, which enlisted Yad Vashem and the World Zionist Organization. Moshe Oren planned it, and youth movement members paved the roughly 200-meter trail by hand over about two months. It was inaugurated in spring 2003, on the 60th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising; in 2004 the Nitzr Aharon monument was dedicated at its upper end.

The path's Hebrew name, HaShvil HaMehaber ("The Connecting Path"), refers to its role linking Yad Vashem with the Mount Herzl visitors' route, a route meant to symbolize the ascent from Holocaust to rebirth. Since shortly after its opening, thousands of students from across the country walk it each year on a march held between Holocaust Remembrance Day and Memorial Day, passing the Carriage Memorial and Warsaw Ghetto Square before climbing to Mount Herzl.

The path climbs about 200 meters from the main entrance plaza of Yad Vashem up to the plot of the nation's greats on Mount Herzl's southwestern slope. It is walked on foot only, so allow a short but steady uphill walk. The annual Connecting Path march passes along it between Holocaust Remembrance Day and Memorial Day.

The trail was built by Israeli youth themselves, making it a grassroots example of community participation in national commemoration. This bottom-up initiative shows how young people personally shaped the connection between these two memory sites.