A memorial to the thousands of Jewish partisans who fought against the Nazis in World War II is to be erected before the end of the year at Mt. Herzl in Jerusalem.

The project was initiated by a few of the last remaining Jewish partisans in Israel, who for years have sought funding and a site for a memorial from state authorities. The project was made possible through the assistance of a young businessman, who promised to finance it and pulled some strings to obtain an appropriate location.

The designer of the monument, artist and former partisan Alexander Bogen, said that he and his former comrades hope they will live to see the finished memorial, but hope it will be erected in any event, as a legacy to future generations.

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"It is inconceivable that in the State of Israel there will not be a memorial to the Jewish partisans," Bogen said this week. "We should have been a symbol like Masada, but until now the attitude toward us has been lukewarm."

Bogen, 92, grew up in Vilna (Vilnius), in Lithuania, where he graduated from the city's art academy. Shortly after the German occupation, Bogen was captured by the Nazis and sent to the Vilna Ghetto, but he escaped into the forest and joined the partisans. He later linked up with members of the underground in the ghetto, under the command of Abba Kovner, and helped some of them escape. After the war, Bogen gave up a promising career in Poland and immigrated to Israel. He has been active since the 1950s in the Organization of Partisans, Underground Fighters and Ghetto Rebels in Israel, whose current chairman is Baruch Shuv, among the leaders of the underground in the Vilna Ghetto.

According to estimates, about 10,000 Jews fought behind German lines in occupied Europe. However, Bogen said, "In Israel, the partisans' movement never found its rightful place." The small number of memorial plaques that have been erected in memory of them did not satisfy him and his former comrades, who dreamed of a large, impressive monument.

Bogen's design calls for an environmental sculpture made of Jerusalem limestone, with a horizontal element eight meters across and an obelisk of similar proportion, that will stand in a small pool of water. The horizontal element, according to Bogen, symbolizes a lines of people going toward their death, while the obelisk represents the fighters' hope. A large plaza in front of the sculpture is planned, for visits and official ceremonies, and a black plaque will indicate every place in Europe where Jews fought against the Nazis.

For years, the partisans' requests for official help in creating a memorial were rebuffed. "We were treated like people whose time has past, whose story is finished," Bogen recalled. The exception was one municipality in the Sharon region, which agreed to allot land for the monument, but the partisans failed to find anyone with the means to finance the project, estimated at hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The situation changed when Noam Lanir, 40, an online-gambling tycoon, who for the past two years has been aiding Holocaust survivors, felt a need to do something after reading the autobiography of partisan Israel Berestitzki and contacted the author.

"Berestitzki's only request was to help with the monument," Lanir said yesterday to Haaretz. "I told him it would be a great honor to underwrite such a project."

He was opposed to erecting the memorial at the site offered in the Sharon. He felt it should be on Jerusalem's Mt. Herzl, but the last open area there had already been allocated for a memorial to the Ethiopian Jews, who died trying to reach Israel.

Jewish Agency chairman Zeev Bielski, who met with the partisans two months ago, appealed to the heads of the Jewish National Fund and asked them to reserve land for the monument on a site adjacent to Mt. Herzl. An appropriate plot was located recently, and Lanir hopes that work can begin on the memorial as early as next month.