1951 Israel HOLOCAUST POSTER WW2 Jewish JUDAICA Children MARTYRS Hebrew KKL JNF For Sale

DESCRIPTION: Here for sale is a genuine authenticvintagealmost 75 years oldJEWISH POSTER . Lithographic printing ,Which was issued by the JNF ( Jewish National Fund ) - KKL ( Keren KayemetLe\'Israel ) in1951 , When the KKL-JNF has inisiated and plated the FORESTof the HOLOCAUST JEWISH CHILDREN MARTYRS in the hills of JERUSALEM , Only 5-6years after the end of WW2 and the HOLOCAUST HORRORS , Only 2-3 years afterthe establishment of the STATE of ISRAEL and its 1948 WAR ofINDEPENDENCE. The extremely rare LITHOGRAPHIC POSTER was dedicated tothose JEWISH CHILDREN MARTYRS and their FOREST. The HEBREW heading is\" MARZAVTAM - YA\'AR HAYELADIM HAKDOSHIM \" (THEIR TOMBSTONE -THE FOREST OF THE HOLY JEWISHCHILDREN MARTYRS )A thrilling GRAPHICDESIGN . Acolorful LITHO-OFFSET Printing. Designed by Rotchild& Lipman. Printed by Levin-Epstein. The poster SIZE is around20\" x 14\" . The poster isprinted on stock.Verygoodcondition. ( Pls look at scan for accurate AS IS images ) ThePOSTER will be sent rolled in a special protective rigid sealed tube.

AUTHENTICITY:The poster comes from a KKL- JNF oldwharehouse andis fullyguaranteed ORIGINAL from1951, Itis NOT a reproduction or a recently made reprint or an immitation ,Itcomes with life long GUARANTEE for itsAUTHENTICITY and ORIGINALITY.

PAYMENTS : Paypal .

SHIPPING : Shipp worldwide via registeredairmail is $29 .Poster will be sent rolled in a special protective rigid sealed tube.

The Forest of the Martyrs (Hebrew: יער הקדושים‎) (Ya\'ar HaKdoshim) is a forest on the outskirts of Jerusalem, Israel. It is located on the western edge of Eshtaol Forest near Beit Meir. It was planted as a memorial to those who died in the Holocaust and will eventually contain six million trees, symbolizing the six million Jews who perished at the hands of the Nazis in World War II. The memorial contains a sculpture by Nathan Rappaport entitled Scroll of Fire. **** Jewish National Fund (Abbreviation - JNF, Hebrew: Keren Kayemeth Leyisrael, KKL) - Fund established by the Fifth Zionist Congress in 1901 to purchase land in the land of Israel and forward settlement. JNF was originally funded entirely by contributions of private citizens. Remarkably, the greatest financial participation came not from rich Jewish financiers and philanthropists, as Herzl and others had envisioned, but rather from collection of coins in charity boxes that were placed in hundreds of thousands of homes, businesses and Jewish institutions. Thanks to work of the JNF in land purchase and reforestation, Israel is the only country in the world that has more trees in the 21st century than it did at the beginning of the 20th century. Land purchases in the 1920s and 1930s were in great part the responsibility of Arthur Ruppin and Yehushua Hankin. Since the founding of the State of Israel, JNF has gotten land holdings from the government primarily, rather than from purchases. JNF is also exclusively in charge of new town development. JNF\'s legal status with regard to its land holdings was formalized in the 1960 Basic Law. The idea of a Jewish National Fund was conceived by professor Zvi Hermann Schapira and presented to an earlier congress. Shapira died in 1898 without seeing his proposal realized. The proposal was raised again in the fifth congress, but was about to be tabled, until Herzl made an impassioned speech in its favor. . One month after the fund was established, Yona Krementzky was appointed to head JNF. Krementzky tried different methods of raising money, such as publishing JNF stamps, the proceeds of which went into the fund. These stamps were affixed to official Zionist documents as well as personal letters, and many people collected them. The first stamp was issued in 1902 and showed the Star of David and the name \"Zion.\" None of these had great successes. However, Krementzky also adopted the suggestion of Haim Kleinman, who proposed that a collection box be placed in every Jewish home so that contributions could be made to JNF at every opportunity. In the period between the two World Wars, about one million Blue Boxes could be found in Jewish homes throughout the world. In the spring of 1903 JNF acquired its first parcel of land: 50 acres in Hadera given as a gift by the well-known philanthropist Isaac (Yitzhak Leib) Goldberg. In 1904, JNF was called upon to carry out its first mission: financing the expenses of Jewish scientists, which was the start of JNF\'s work in research and development. By 1905, JNF\'s land holdings had expanded to include land near the Sea of Galilee, and at Ben Shemen in the center of the country. JNF bought yet another area from the Zionist movement\'s Anglo-Palestine Bank, in the center of the country at Hulda. The land at Hulda was bought for a very special purpose the planting of olive groves in memory of Herzl and with this, JNF embarked on a new venture: afforestation. In this first decade of its existence, land acquisition was not JNF\'s only concern; JNF played a central role in establishing the first modern Jewish city Tel Aviv acquiring land for the first collective community (known today as kibbutzim) and first workers\' community, and constructing the Yemenite neighborhoods. JNF also set up and administered farms, continued its afforestation programs, which laid the foundation for JNF to become the leading environmental agency in Israel, and was instrumental in founding secondary schools and pioneering higher education an impressive record of achievement in a country whose Jewish population at the time numbered only 85,000. It was also in this period that JNF set up an experimental agricultural station at Ben Shemen under the direction of Yitzhak Wilkansky, whose work in mixed farming, or crop diversification, remains the basis of most Israeli agriculture to this day. In July 1920, representatives of Zionist organizations from all over the world convened for the first time since the outbreak of World War I to discuss a course of action. It was decided by the representatives that the land which had been purchased for Jewish settlement belonged to the Jewish people as a whole, and that JNF\'s function was to use its donations to acquire land which would be allotted to settlers by inheritable leasehold. By 1921, JNF had quadrupled its land holdings, bringing them up to 25,000 acres. A Bridge of love From its very inception, JNF was dedicated to practical work, but its educational and informational activities went hand in glove with this work. At the start of the 1920s, the world Jewish population numbered some 15 million people, scattered throughout 76 different countries. JNF reached out to every Jewish community, regardless of size or distance. JNF\'s voice was heard not only in asking for contributions, but also in Zionist education, which helped to connect Jewish communities to the homeland. This is a leadership role the organization still plays today. JNF\'s Blue Box stood in hundreds of thousands of Jewish homes, schools, synagogues, public buildings and businesses. JNF made it possible for every Jew--whether man, woman or child--to become a partner in the Zionist enterprise and be personally involved in the development of the land. In 1926, Jewish National Fund was incorporated in the United States, bringing a further sense of connection with the Homeland to American Jews. In 1927, JNF had in its possession some 50,000 acres of land on which 50 communities stood. In 1928, planting began for Balfour Forest near Kibbutz Ginegar, and Mishmar HaEmek Forest. By 1935, JNF had planted 1.7 million trees over a total area of 1,750 acres.Throughout this period JNF continued to reclaim land and drain swamps like those in the Hula Valley. At the end of 1935, after 15 years of tireless effort, JNF held 89,500 acres of land on which stood 108 communities. Most of the land was in the center of the country and in the valley regions. In 1939, despite the severe restrictions imposed on Jewish immigration by the British mandate authorities, there were 450,000 Jews in the country, 10% of whom lived on JNF land. The Zionist Congress of August 1939 convened under a shadow of dread for the future of European Jewry. In September, World War II broke out, the extermination of six million Jews across Europe began, and the need for a Jewish homeland became ever more urgent. During the summer of 1939, the British had issued official prohibitions against establishing more communities in new areas. The only avenue of resistance remaining to the Jews was to go on acquiring more land despite the British laws. JNF initiated Operation Tower & Stockade. Under the cover of darkness and amidst the constant threat of discovery, ten cities were built overnight. In order for JNF to fulfill its new tasks at a time when land purchase had become increasingly difficult, complex, and expensive, a great deal of money was required. Despite the hardships of war, funds raised from Jews around the world increased considerably. Land acquisition increased steadily in the first three years of war, and by 1942, sixteen new communities had been set up on JNF land. Keeping with David Ben Gurion\'s notion that settlement of the Negev was \"rapidly becoming the central issue,\" JNF deemed it the organization\'s duty to reclaim, settle, and develop Israel\'s south. In addition to settling the Negev, JNF continued to build Kibbutzim and outposts, and to develop the Galilee in northern Israel. One such camp went up in Biriya, which was built on a mountainside near Safed. It was settled by a religious Palmach unit and became a legend after surviving three attacks by British tanks and constant demands to vacate. When the war ended in 1945, the true and terrible magnitude of the catastrophe that had befallen European Jewry was realized. Yet in the summer of 1946, it became clear that the British planned to confine Jewish settlement to a small autonomous region and keep the entire southern region of the country as a British protectorate. But by the end of the war, JNF\'s land holdings had expanded tremendously, and the Zionist Executive decided to launch a large-scale settlement program throughout the Negev, in the very heart of the banned territory. JNF was called upon to help plan the operation of settling the lands it had bought over the past five years. Throughout the three years between the end of World War II and the proclamation of the Jewish State, JNF continued its remarkable activities: afforestation, land reclamation, and assistance to communities. It was also responsible for all the communities of the Negev until the end of 1948. On May 14, 1948, the decision was made to proclaim Israel\'s independence and her Declaration of Independence was voted on at JNF headquarters in Tel Aviv. In May 1948 the Jewish population of the State of Israel numbered 650,000, scattered over some 305 towns. Two hundred and thirty three of these towns stood on JNF land. To a large extent, the lands bought and redeemed by JNF-KKL over the years determined the borders of the State of Israel. Upon statehood, JNF-KKL worked on reclaiming and afforesting the land, boosting agricultural expansion and providing employment for thousands of new immigrants. This \"relief work\" both offered immigrants an initial livelihood and formed the basis for the building of communities in the Jerusalem Corridor, Galilee, the Taanach and Adullam regions. With Israel\'s War of Independence over, hundreds of thousands of immigrants began streaming into the newly established nation. The first arrivals were housed in makeshift towns and villages, and when those were full, tent cities were set up throughout the country. By 1951, Israel\'s population had doubled. Before independence, JNF\'s principal task had been the acquisition of land for settlement. After the war, JNF concerned itself with enterprises that were central to the upbuilding of the State: settling new areas; absorbing immigrants and providing them with employment working the land; reclamation; afforestation and development projects. In the Fifties, intensive afforestation began in the Upper Galilee and development continued in and around the Jerusalem Hills, where the Martyrs Forest was planted in 1951 in memory of the victims of the Holocaust. ****** The Holocaust (also called Shoah in Hebrew) refers to the period from January 30, 1933, when Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany, to May 8, 1945 (V-E Day), when the war in Europe ended. During this time, Jews in Europe were subjected to progressively harsh persecution that ultimately led to the murder of 6,000,000 Jews (1.5 million of these being children) and the destruction of 5,000 Jewish communities. These deaths represented two-thirds of European Jewry and one-third of world Jewry. The Jews who died were not casualties of the fighting that ravaged Europe during World War II. Rather, they were the victims of Germany\'s deliberate and systematic attempt to annihilate the entire Jewish population of Europe, a plan Hitler called the “Final Solution” (Endlosung). After its defeat in World War I, Germany was humiliated by the Versailles Treaty, which reduced its prewar territory, drastically reduced its armed forces, demanded the recognition of its guilt for the war, and stipulated it pay reparations to the allied powers. The German Empire destroyed, a new parliamentary government called the Weimar Republic was formed. The republic suffered from economic instability, which grew worse during the worldwide depression after the New York stock market crash in 1929. Massive inflation followed by very high unemployment heightened existing class and political differences and began to undermine the government. On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler, leader of the National Socialist German Workers (Nazi) Party, was named chancellor by president Paul von Hindenburg after the Nazi party won a significant percentage of the vote in the elections of 1932. The Nazi Party had taken advantage of the political unrest in Germany to gain an electoral foothold. The Nazis incited clashes with the communists, who many feared, disrupted the government with demonstrations, and conducted a vicious propaganda campaign against its political opponents-the weak Weimar government, and the Jews, whom the Nazis blamed for Germany\'s ills. Propaganda: “The Jews Are Our Misfortune” A major tool of the Nazis\' propaganda assault was the weekly Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer (The Attacker). At the bottom of the front page of each issue, in bold letters, the paper proclaimed, \"The Jews are our misfortune!\" Der Stürmer also regularly featured cartoons of Jews in which they were caricatured as hooked-nosed and ape¬like. The influence of the newspaper was far-reaching: by 1938 about a half million copies were distributed weekly. Soon after he became chancellor, Hitler called for new elections in an effort to get full control of the Reichstag, the German parliament, for the Nazis. The Nazis used the government apparatus to terrorize the other parties. They arrested their leaders and banned their political meetings. Then, in the midst of the election campaign, on February 27, 1933, the Reichstag building burned. A Dutchman named Marinus van der Lubbe was arrested for the crime, and he swore he had acted alone. Although many suspected the Nazis were ultimately responsible for the act, the Nazis managed to blame the Communists, thus turning more votes their way. The fire signaled the demise of German democracy. On the next day, the government, under the pretense of controlling the Communists, abolished individual rights and protections: freedom of the press, assembly, and expression were nullified, as well as the right to privacy. When the elections were held on March 5, the Nazis received nearly 44 percent of the vote, and with 8 percent offered by the Conservatives, won a majority in the government. The Nazis moved swiftly to consolidate their power into a dictatorship. On March 23, the Enabling Act was passed. It sanctioned Hitler’s dictatorial efforts and legally enabled him to pursue them further. The Nazis marshaled their formidable propaganda machine to silence their critics. They also developed a sophisticated police and military force. The Sturmabteilung (S.A., Storm Troopers), a grassroots organization, helped Hitler undermine the German democracy. The Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei, Secret State Police), a force recruited from professional police officers, was given complete freedom to arrest anyone after February 28. The Schutzstaffel (SS, Protection Squad) served as Hitler’s personal bodyguard and eventually controlled the concentration camps and the Gestapo. The Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers¬SS (S.D., Security Service of the SS) functioned as the Nazis\' intelligence service, uncovering enemies and keeping them under surveillance. With this police infrastructure in place, opponents of the Nazis were terrorized, beaten, or sent to one of the concentration camps the Germans built to incarcerate them. Dachau, just outside of Munich, was the first such camp built for political prisoners. Dachau\'s purpose changed over time and eventually became another brutal concentration camp for Jews. By the end of 1934 Hitler was in absolute control of Germany, and his campaign against the Jews in full swing. The Nazis claimed the Jews corrupted pure German culture with their \"foreign\" and \"mongrel\" influence. They portrayed the Jews as evil and cowardly, and Germans as hardworking, courageous, and honest. The Jews, the Nazis claimed, who were heavily represented in finance, commerce, the press, literature, theater, and the arts, had weakened Germany\'s economy and culture. The massive government-supported propaganda machine created a racial anti-Semitism, which was different from the long-standing anti-Semitic tradition of the Christian churches. The superior race was the \"Aryans,\" the Germans. The word Aryan, \"derived from the study of linguistics, which started in the eighteenth century and at some point determined that the Indo-Germanic (also known as Aryan) languages were superior in their structures, variety, and vocabulary to the Semitic languages that had evolved in the Near East. This judgment led to a certain conjecture about the character of the peoples who spoke these languages; the conclusion was that the \'Aryan\' peoples were likewise superior to the \'Semitic\' ones\" (Leni Yahil, The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jewry, New York: Oxford University Press, 1990, p. 36). The Jews Are Isolated from Society The Nazis then combined their racial theories with the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin to justify their treatment of the Jews. The Germans, as the strongest and fittest, were destined to rule, while the weak and racially adulterated Jews were doomed to extinction. Hitler began to restrict the Jews with legislation and terror, which entailed burning books written by Jews, removing Jews from their professions and public schools, confiscating their businesses and property and excluding them from public events. The most infamous of the anti-Jewish legislation were the Nuremberg Laws, enacted on September 15, 1935. They formed the legal basis for the Jews\' exclusion from German society and the progressively restrictive Jewish policies of the Germans. Many Jews attempted to flee Germany, and thousands succeeded by immigrating to such countries as Belgium, Czechoslovakia, England, France and Holland. It was much more difficult to get out of Europe. Jews encountered stiff immigration quotas in most of the world\'s countries. Even if they obtained the necessary documents, they often had to wait months or years before leaving. Many families out of desperation sent their children first. In July 1938, representatives of 32 countries met in the French town of Evian to discuss the refugee and immigration problems created by the Nazis in Germany. Nothing substantial was done or decided at the Evian Conference, and it became apparent to Hitler that no one wanted the Jews and that he would not meet resistance in instituting his Jewish policies. By the autumn of 1941, Europe was in effect sealed to most legal emigration. The Jews were trapped. On November 9¬10, 1938, the attacks on the Jews became violent. Hershel Grynszpan, a 17¬year¬old Jewish boy distraught at the deportation of his family, shot Ernst vom Rath, the third secretary in the German Embassy in Paris, who died on November 9. Nazi hooligans used this assassination as the pretext for instigating a night of destruction that is now known as Kristallnacht (the night of broken glass). They looted and destroyed Jewish homes and businesses and burned synagogues. Many Jews were beaten and killed; 30,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps. The Jews Are Confined to Ghettos Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, beginning World War II. Soon after, in 1940, the Nazis began establishing ghettos for the Jews of Poland. More than 10 percent of the Polish population was Jewish, numbering about three million. Jews were forcibly deported from their homes to live in crowded ghettos, isolated from the rest of society. This concentration of the Jewish population later aided the Nazis in their deportation of the Jews to the death camps. The ghettos lacked the necessary food, water, space, and sanitary facilities required by so many people living within their constricted boundaries. Many died of deprivation and starvation. The “Final Solution” In June 1941 Germany attacked the Soviet Union and began the \"Final Solution.\" Four mobile killing groups were formed called Einsatzgruppen A, B, C and D. Each group contained several commando units. The Einsatzgruppen gathered Jews town by town, marched them to huge pits dug earlier, stripped them, lined them up, and shot them with automatic weapons. The dead and dying would fall into the pits to be buried in mass graves. In the infamous Babi Yar massacre, near Kiev, 30,000-35,000 Jews were killed in two days. In addition to their operations in the Soviet Union, the Einsatzgruppen conducted mass murder in eastern Poland, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia. It is estimated that by the end of 1942, the Einsatzgruppen had murdered more than 1.3 million Jews. On January 20, 1942, several top officials of the German government met to officially coordinate the military and civilian administrative branches of the Nazi system to organize a system of mass murder of the Jews. This meeting, called the Wannsee Conference, \"marked the beginning of the full-scale, comprehensive extermination operation [of the Jews] and laid the foundations for its organization, which started immediately after the conference ended\" (Yahil, The Holocaust, p. 318). While the Nazis murdered other national and ethnic groups, such as a number of Soviet prisoners of war, Polish intellectuals, and gypsies, only the Jews were marked for systematic and total annihilation. Jews were singled out for \"Special Treatment\" (Sonderbehandlung), which meant that Jewish men, women and children were to be methodically killed with poisonous gas. In the exacting records kept at the Auschwitz death camp, the cause of death of Jews who had been gassed was indicated by \"SB,\" the first letters of the two words that form the German term for \"Special Treatment.\" By the spring of 1942, the Nazis had established six killing centers (death camps) in Poland: Chelmno (Kulmhof), Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Maidanek and Auschwitz. All were located near railway lines so that Jews could be easily transported daily. A vast system of camps (called Lagersystem) supported the death camps. The purpose of these camps varied: some were slave labor camps, some transit camps, others concentration camps and their sub-camps, and still others the notorious death camps. Some camps combined all of these functions or a few of them. All the camps were intolerably brutal. The major concentration camps were Ravensbruck, Neuengamme, Bergen-Belsen, Sachsenhausen, Gross-Rosen, Buchenwald, Theresienstadt, Flossenburg, Natzweiler-Struthof, Dachau, Mauthausen, Stutthof, and Dora/Nordhausen. In nearly every country overrun by the Nazis, the Jews were forced to wear badges marking them as Jews, they were rounded up into ghettos or concentration camps and then gradually transported to the killing centers. The death camps were essentially factories for murdering Jews. The Germans shipped thousands of Jews to them each day. Within a few hours of their arrival, the Jews had been stripped of their possessions and valuables, gassed to death, and their bodies burned in specially designed crematoriums. Approximately 3.5 million Jews were murdered in these death camps. Many healthy, young strong Jews were not killed immediately. The Germans\' war effort and the “Final Solution” required a great deal of manpower, so the Germans reserved large pools of Jews for slave labor. These people, imprisoned in concentration and labor camps, were forced to work in German munitions and other factories, such as I.G. Farben and Krupps, and wherever the Nazis needed laborers. They were worked from dawn until dark without adequate food and shelter. Thousands perished, literally worked to death by the Germans and their collaborators. In the last months of Hitler’s Reich, as the German armies retreated, the Nazis began marching the prisoners still alive in the concentration camps to the territory they still controlled. The Germans forced the starving and sick Jews to walk hundreds of miles. Most died or were shot along the way. About a quarter of a million Jews died on the death marches. Jewish Resistance The Germans\' overwhelming repression and the presence of many collaborators in the various local populations severely limited the ability of the Jews to resist. Jewish resistance did occur, however, in several forms. Staying alive, clean, and observing Jewish religious traditions constituted resistance under the dehumanizing conditions imposed by the Nazis. Other forms of resistance involved escape attempts from the ghettos and camps. Many who succeeded in escaping the ghettos lived in the forests and mountains in family camps and in fighting partisan units. Once free, though, the Jews had to contend with local residents and partisan groups who were often openly hostile. Jews also staged armed revolts in the ghettos of Vilna, Bialystok, Bedzin-Sosnowiec, Cracow, and Warsaw. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was the largest ghetto revolt. Massive deportations (or Aktions) had been held in the ghetto from July to September 1942, emptying the ghetto of the majority of Jews imprisoned there. When the Germans entered the ghetto again in January 1943 to remove several thousand more, small unorganized groups of Jews attacked them. After four days, the Germans withdrew from the ghetto, having deported far fewer people than they had intended. The Nazis reentered the ghetto on April 19, 1943, the eve of Passover, to evacuate the remaining Jews and close the ghetto. The Jews, using homemade bombs and stolen or bartered weapons, resisted and withstood the Germans for 27 days. They fought from bunkers and sewers and evaded capture until the Germans burned the ghetto building by building. By May 16 the ghetto was in ruins and the uprising crushed. Jews also revolted in the death camps of Sobibor, Treblinka and Auschwitz. All of these acts of resistance were largely unsuccessful in the face of the superior German forces, but they were very important spiritually, giving the Jews hope that one day the Nazis would be defeated. Liberation and the End of War The camps were liberated gradually, as the Allies advanced on the German army. For example, Maidanek (near Lublin, Poland) was liberated by Soviet forces in July 1944, Auschwitz in January 1945 by the Soviets, Bergen-Belsen (near Hanover, Germany) by the British in April 1945, and Dachau by the Americans in April 1945. At the end of the war, between 50,000 and 100,000 Jewish survivors were living in three zones of occupation: American, British and Soviet. Within a year, that figure grew to about 200,000. The American zone of occupation contained more than 90 percent of the Jewish displaced persons (DPs). The Jewish DPs would not and could not return to their homes, which brought back such horrible memories and still held the threat of danger from anti-Semitic neighbors. Thus, they languished in DP camps until emigration could be arranged to Palestine, and later Israel, the United States, South America and other countries. The last DP camp closed in 1957 (David S. Wyman, \"The United States,\" in David S. Wyman, ed., The World Reacts to the Holocaust, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, pp. 707¬10). Below are figures for the number of Jews murdered in each country that came under German domination. They are estimates, as are all figures relating to Holocaust victims. The numbers given here for Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Romania are based on their territorial borders before the 1938 Munich agreement. The total number of six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust, which emerged from the Nuremberg trials, is also an estimate. Numbers have ranged between five and seven million killed. Africa 526Albania 200Austria 65,000Belgium 24,387Czechoslovakia 277,000Denmark 77Estonia 4,000France 83,000Germany 160,000Greece 71,301Hungary 305,000Italy 8,000Latvia 85,000Lithuania 135,000Luxembourg 700Netherlands 106,000Norway 728Poland 3,001,000Romania 364,632Soviet Union 1,500,000Yugoslavia 67,122***** The Scroll of Fire is one of the most beautiful sculptures in Israel. Located in what is the single largest memorial to the Holocaust in the world, the Martyrs Forest, it is an imposing work rich in detail and history – it tells the story of the rebirth of the nation from the Holocaust up to the Six Day War. The sculpture commands a spectacular view of its surroundings. The Martyrs Forest is comprised of six million trees – truly, a living memorial. Four and half million pine trees represent the adults who perished in the Holocaust while a million and (one) half cypress trees account for the children who perished. Dedicated in 1971 by Bnai Brith, the Scroll of Fire is the work of Warsaw-born Nathan Rapoport. Memorials to the Holocaust were a central theme in Rapoport’s works. His sculptures can also be found at Yad Vashem and Kibbutz Yad Mordecai as well as around the world, (including his home-town Warsaw), where he erected a memorial to the ghetto fighters, in the center of what was the headquarters of the Ghetto Fighters Revolt. Interestingly, Rapoport was not very well known in Israel - he was perhaps better known in the United States. There are a number of recurring elements in the Scroll of Fire; mother and child, an olive tree/branch, a menorah and much symbolism. The scroll on the right focuses on the holocaust and its survivors while the scroll on the left deals with the struggle to establish a new homeland. On the right pillar one can see Jews being marched off to the concentration camps. Above them are figures devoid of faces. Here, only their helmets and bayonets depict Nazis. It is as though their horrific acts wiped away their humanity and therefore they cannot be portrayed in full human form. Next, the Warsaw ghetto is seen with its flames and the defenders of the ghetto, an angel bearing a Molotov cocktail and a bearded man bearing a rock are clearly visible. Ascending to the heavens in flames, are a mother and child, followed by survivors of the camps. The survivors are seen leaving the camps – now with their eyes raised, in hope. A small boat represents the thousands who came to Israel in the pre-State days, during the clandestine immigration era. There is an olive tree – whose branches are formed from human bodies. The allegory here is one of renewal. Just as a tree sprouts new branches so is the renewal for the nation that is establishing its homeland possible. The central branch – which is depicted in a fetal position, perhaps best epitomizes this idea, that even in the midst of destruction a new life/nation can be formed. In the scroll on the left the symbols of the wandering Jew, a (walking) stick and a sack are left behind since the wandering is over and the Jew has reached his homeland. A child is seen holding a cluster of grapes, one of the Seven Species with which Eretz Israel was endowed. A pregnant woman depicts the next generation that will be born into freedom. Finally, the reunification of Jerusalem is depicted by a menorah, carried by a group of soldiers. This menorah is symbolic of the menorah from the Arch of Titus in Rome, which commemorated Roman suppression of the Jewish revolt. A small bearded man that supports the menorah is representative of the Prophet Elijah and Rapport’s apparent belief in divine intervention. The explanation above provides just a glimpse of the details that can be seen in this sculpture. It is highly recommended to visit this site with a tour guide who will be able to provide a much more detailed explanation. In an interview that Rapoport gave to Gems in Israel’s publisher almost 25 years ago, he said that art is the one thing that remains of a nation/culture after hundreds of years. Art helps tell the story of a nation’s past, its history. He also noted that the Jewish nation has much to convey and that not enough of it is expressed. He gave the example of the (Catholic) church – which truly understands the significance that art plays, as is evidenced by the integration of painting, sculpture, architecture, music and clothing into its daily life. A small plaque near the Scroll of Fire – stands as a testament to the artist\'s work, “My words have been made of bronze and stone, they are silent, heavy and longstanding.” Directions: The Martyrs Forest is located on Route 395. From Beit Jamal take Route 38 north, toward Beit Shemesh. At Shimshon Junction take Route 395 east. Be on the lookout for a sign leading to the Martyrs Forest and the Scroll of Fire monument (not far from Moshav Kissalon Ramat Raziel). Tip: While in the area you may also want to take in the monument at Pilot’s Mountain (Har Ha\'tayasim) This is a monument that commemorates the pilots of two planes that crashed nearby during the Maccabi operation during the 1948 War War of Independence.