A B’nai B’rith campaign to plant 500, 000 trees in its Martyrs’s Forest in Israel was completed this week. The B’nai B’rith Commission on Israel announced today that $1, 016, 029 had been raised, and more than 508, 000 saplings planted, since 1954.
The program was initiated as a living memorial to B’nai B’rith members who perished in the Nazi holocaust, or who died during World War II or Israel’s War of Independence. The B’nai B’rith forest covers a 500-acre tract of land in the Judean hills on the outskirts of Jerusalem, and includes a sanctuary hewn out of a mountainside. It is part of the larger Martyrs’ Forest, established by the Jewish National Fund, where 6,000,000 trees are being planted as a memorial to Jewish victims of the Hitler era.
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