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Yad Vashem workers strike for the first time

The museum remained open to visitors despite the daylong strike.

Rubio Sa'ar Yad Vashem
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio participates in a tour and wreath-laying ceremony at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem with Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, Feb. 16, 2025. Photo by Freddie Everett/U.S. State Department.

Staff at Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum went on strike Thursday over a wage dispute for the first time in the institution’s seven-decade history.

The museum remained open to visitors despite the daylong strike, a spokeswoman said.

She said it was “regrettable” that the workers union went ahead with the strike despite the fact that a solution was within reach, with 95% of the fiscal issues in dispute already resolved.

Yad Vashem, which was inaugurated in 1953, is the second-most-visited Israeli tourist site, after the Western Wall.

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