— A forest was dedicated in the Jerusalem Hills in memory of one of Israel’s foremost diplomats, Zeev Shek, who died two years ago while serving as Ambassador to Austria. The 5000-tree forest was planted by the Jewish National Fund with funds raised by the Austrian publisher, Fritz Molden, who attended the ceremony.
“Zeev was born and raised in the forests of Czechoslovakia, ” Molden told the large gathering of Shek’s friends and admirers, “and I felt that the most appropriate way of honoring his love for Israel was to plant a forest in his memory to continue the tradition of nat-tion-building with which he so deeply identified.”
He continued: “Zeev Shek built a bridge between Jews and the non-Jewish world of Central Europe, tirelessly working for a better understanding by Europeans of his country.”
Yaacov Tsur, himself a former senior Israeli diplomat and the past president of the JNF, said Shek had filled many of the most difficult and challenging posts in the foreign service, starting from Premier Moshe Sharett’s secretary in the early 1950s and moving to key postings in London, Paris and Rome.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
