At the initiative of Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, who also hold the city’s education portfolio, a tradition began this year among high school students in the city to visit and care for the monuments and tombstones of Israel’s fallen soldiers. As part of the initiative, the schools adopted a list of names of those who had fallen and carried out research on them. The students will tour the cemeteries today and tomorrow, in order to clean and beautify the tombstones of those who fell in the line of duty buried in civilian cemeteries for Memorial Day.

Nir Barkat, the mayor of Jerusalem, said: “Our country has been built with the blood of its sons, and it will always be covered with sorrow.

The project takes place in the Cemeteries in Givat Shaul and Sanhedria. Among the schools taking part in the project are Givat Gonen, Kedma, N’vei Ruchama, Dror, Netivot Chayim, Torah and Science, a religious youth center and Lady Davis. In the coming years, the project will expand to additional schools.

Ms. Michal Hadad, principal of the Kedma School, one of the schools participating in the project, said: “The Kedma school community bows its head and remembers the fighters of the Israeli systems who sacrificed their lives and fell in their defense of the State of Israel.”

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)