Scroll of Fire in Martyrs Forest
There has to be good reason to go to the middle of a forest to see a monument. This monument is powerful and is situated in the Martyrs Forest at the crest of a terraced hill in a KKL forest of six million trees planted in memory of the Jews who perished in the Holocaust.
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Directions: Enter “Scroll of Fire” into Waze.
Public transport: Enter “Scroll of Fire” into Moovit. The memorial is a 450-meter/5-minute walk from the bus stop.
The bronze monument resembles two giant, half-unrolled Torah scrolls positioned to face the Jerusalem landscape and echoing the Jewish people as the “People of the Book.” The contrast between the rugged stone, the planted forest, and the bronze is intentional, symbolizing destruction, survival, and renewal.
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The monument was created by Nathan (Natan) Rapoport (1911–1987), a Polish-born Jewish sculptor and painter, who survived the Holocaust and subsequently worked in Poland, Israel and the United States.
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The narrative told forms the sequence destruction → survival → homecoming → renewal. Rapoport often compresses many events into one sculptural “narrative field,” the intention being that you feel the emotional weight more than identify separately every historical detail.
Moving from the bottom to the top, the scroll on the left shows refugees & deportation, the figures squeezed together and wrapped in shawls. The crowded composition conveys helplessness. Nazi military imagery and camp fencing are embedded in the bronze background. A bearded figure leading children is Janusz Korczak, an educator who refused to abandon the children of his orphanage in Warsaw. There are also ghetto fighters, strong figures with clenched fists and homemade weapons, referencing the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Parts of the scroll appear “torn” or “burned,” representing the attempted destruction of Jewish identity and memory.
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The space between the scrolls is a “bridge” between catastrophe and rebirth, with the opening between them framing the hills of Jerusalem, and serving as a literal and symbolic passage from exile to homecoming.
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Compared with the scroll on the left, the scroll on the right is brighter, full of motion upward, and the figures tend to rise rather than sink. Immigrants are climbing upward, carrying bundles, their faces turned toward the land. There are figures planting trees, plowing fields, symbols of reclaiming the land and hope. A central figure blowing a shofar echoes the prophetic call of national revival. Young people dancing in a circle are the embodiment of joy, communal life, and rebirth. There are also menorah and olive tree motifs, symbols of Jewish continuity and the reborn State of Israel.
