Menin Gate offered to the citizens of Ypres for the ornament of their city and in commemoration of the days where the British Army defended it against the invader." Reaction to the Menin Gate, the first of the Imperial (now Commonwealth) War Graves Commission's Memorials to the Missing, ranged from its condemnation by the war poet Siegfried Sassoon, to praise by the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig. Sassoon described the Menin Gate in his poem 'On Passing the New Menin Gate', saying that the dead of the Ypres Salient would "deride this sepulchre of crime". Zweig, in contrast, praised the simplicity of the
Garden of the Missing in Action the ""23 Who Went Down at Sea" of May 1941. Since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, over 400 Israeli soldiers have been declared "Missing in Action." The construction of the Garden of the Missing on Mt. Herzl was initiated and headed by Moshe Oren, as head of the Ministry of Defense Commemoration Division. An annual memorial service for the Missing Soldiers of Israel takes place in the garden's main plaza on the Seventh of Adar, the day in the Hebrew calendar which marks the traditional date of the death of Moses, whose grave is known only