Vasermil Stadium

The story

Vasermil Stadium was the football stadium of Beersheba, between Neighborhood Bet and Neighborhood Heh, close to Yehuda Halevi Street. It was built in 1959 and dedicated on 31 October of that year, in a festive match of Hapoel Be'er Sheva against Hapoel Tel Aviv. In its first form some of the spectators sat on small concrete stands opposite the center of the pitch, and the rest of the crowd settled on the earth embankment that surrounded it; in the end the stadium held thirteen thousand places in nine stands. In December 1988 a general renovation was completed with the donation of Lily Friedman-Vasermil, and the stadium was named after her son Arthur Vasermil, who was murdered in 1943 in the Majdanek extermination camp when he was seven years old. The renovation included concrete stands around the whole perimeter of the pitch. In 1995 it was renovated again ahead of the match of Hapoel Be'er Sheva against Barcelona in the UEFA Cup, and then plastic seats were installed on part of the stands; in 2009, with the club's return to the Premier League, seats were installed in the rest as well. The place also served as a stage for events that are not sport, among them the Selihot service held in it every year close to Yom Kippur by Rabbi Binyamin Bitzri, which drew a large crowd to it. In 2011 the construction of Turner Stadium began in the north of the city, and when it was dedicated in 2015 it replaced Vasermil; the last match of Hapoel Be'er Sheva here was held on 30 May 2015, and the club went on training in it until November 2018. In May 2013 the municipality decided to sell the compound, and in September 2014 two construction companies won it in a tender for 417.5 million shekels. A residential neighborhood is planned on the site. The demolition of the stadium began on 24 June 2019.

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