Eternal Flame

Commemorative coin of the Central Bank of Russia for the 60th anniversary of the victory in the Great Patriotic War

An eternal flame , also eternal fire or eternal light, is a constantly burning fire or a burning torch. It reminds of people or events of special interest and is intended to keep the memory alive.

Religious meaning

The eternal light goes back to the tabernacle handed down in the Torah ; in the Orthodox churches of the Orient it has stood in front of or next to the tabernacle for around 400 years, and in the Roman Catholic Church since around the 13th century.

In Zoroastrianism , the Eternal Flame is a cleansing power that is worshiped in a fire temple .

Monuments designated as "eternal flame"

(Selection)

Eternal flame at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on the Arc de Triomphe , Paris

Monuments to people of public interest

For Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi in the Raj Ghat Samadhi in Delhi
For Martin Luther King at the King Center in Atlanta
For John F. Kennedy in Arlington National Cemetery
For Elvis Presley in Memphis , Tennessee
For Yitzhak Rabin in Rabin Square in Tel Aviv

Memorials for historical events

Eternal flame at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Moscow

For the victims of the Holocaust , the Yad Vashem in Jerusalem

For the Battle of Stalingrad in the memorial on Mamayev Hill near Volgograd

For dropping the atomic bomb in Hiroshima at the Ground Zero memorial

For the victims of the Turkish genocide of the Armenians 1915 / 16 at the Memorial Tsitsernakaberd in the Armenian capital Yerevan

An eternal flame has been burning on the tomb of the unknown soldier on the Triumphal Arch in Paris since 1921 . It commemorates the many unidentified dead of the First World War .

For the victims of flight and expulsion of the Germans after the Second World War on Theodor-Heuss-Platz in Berlin

The memorial for the victims of the Nazi tyranny on the Square of the Victims of National Socialism in Munich (since 1985)

The memorial to the victims of World War II on Ferhadija Street in Sarajevo

For the unidentified fallen soldiers of the Second World War at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in the Alexander Garden in Moscow

For the soldiers who died during the freedom struggles for the Republic of Latvia in the Brothers Cemetery in Riga

For the victims of the Amritsar massacre on April 13, 1919

For the freedom fighters killed during apartheid in front of the Heldenacker in Namibia

In memory of the dead of the Second World War and the sufferings of the Luxembourg people on Cannon Hill in Luxembourg City .

In memory of the fallen soldiers in the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863

In memory of those who fell in the Croatian and Bosnian Wars, an eternal flame has been burning at the Altar of the Fatherland near the Croatian capital Zagreb since 1994

Web links

Commons : Eternal Flame - collection of images, videos and audio files