The forest, whose planting began in 1951 near Route 1 on the road going up to Jerusalem, includes six million trees – One tree for each victim. It was created upon an initiative by KKL-JNF and with the assistance of the "B'nai B'rith" organization, with trees being planted in it by Holocaust survivors, representatives of the Jewish communities from around the world and new Olim. Within the Forest of the Martyrs, there is also the "Forest of the Martyred Children" (which is also known as the "Forest of the Unknown Child"), which was planted in 1952 to commemorate the million and a half Jewish children who perished in the Holocaust. The forest was inaugurated by children, who planted the first saplings as part of a touching project in which school children from throughout Israel had participated, who donated their birthday money for the commemoration via the National Teachers Union for KKL-JNF.
At present, as part of an extensive project to scan the KKL-JNF's photograph archive, we discovered rare pictures of tree plantings in the Forest of the Martyrs and additional forests – pictures that provide a glimpse of the pioneering commemoration efforts of the period.
Upon the planting of the Forest of the Martyrs, the hope at KKL-JNF was that this would be the last forest to commemorate a disaster of such a scale. Sadly, we are forced to deal with a different reality. At present, KKL-JNF is preparing to plant a "Swords of Iron War Forest" – a forest that would commemorate those who fell and perished in the Swords of Iron War.
Efrat Sinai, Director of the Archives Section at KKL-JNF: " the pictures we recently discovered in the scanning project are an exciting testimonial to the manner in which those who perished in the Holocaust were commemorated – by planting 6 million trees that serve as green yahrzeit candles, which remind us of the horrific disaster that befell the Jewish people in the Holocaust. Sadly, the current reality forces us to create commemoration forests again. Since the beginning of the 20th century, KKL-JNF has documented the sights of the land, and we are happy to share these nostalgic sights with the public at large."