President Truman was today presented with a certificate for a grove of 1,000 trees to form the center of a Children’s Memorial Forest in Palestine. The presentation was made by two Broadway child stars, Richard Tyler and Joyce Van Patten, for the American Christian Palestine Committee.
The Memorial Forest, to be situated near Nazareth, is a gift of the Christian children of the United States in memory of the 1,000,000 Jewish children killed in Europe during the war.
In accepting the certificate, President Truman and Senator Owen Brewster of Maine, a co-chairman of the Committee, who participated in the ceremony, said they would like to go to Palestine and see the trees grow. Secretary of Agriculture Clinton Anderson was also present.
Following their call at the White House, Joyce Van Patten and Richard Tyler were guests at a luncheon held by the Committee. Secretary Anderson, Senator Brewater and Dean Howard M. Le Sourd, director of the committee, were principal speakers. Secretary Anderson pointed out that the memorial served the two-fold purposes of acquainting American children with the human problem of the Jewish children who perished under Hitler, and of helping them to understand the problems of soil conservation through reforestation. Richard Tyler, currently starring in the Broadway play, “Christopher Blake,” and co-chairman of the drive for the forest, told the group that “If more than a million Jewish children were old enough to die, then we are old enough to do something about it.
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.
