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Jerusalem’s Garden of the Righteous came into being in 1962 at the Museum of Yad Vashem, the memorial to the Shoah, in application of point 9 of the law passed by the Knesset in 1953 to establish the remembrance authority, which states:
"With this law the Yad Vashem foundation is established in Jerusalem to commemorate (…) the Righteous among the nations, who risked their lives to help the Jews."
To commemorate the Righteous among the Nations it was decided to plant carob trees. The outcome was the Avenue of the Righteous, which eventually became the garden of the same name.
In 1963 the Commission of the Righteous was formed to select individuals to pay homage to and plant a tree in their name. During its activity the Commission has named some twenty thousand Righteous.
The first chairman of the Commission was Moshe Landau, the celebrated Supreme Court Justice who condemned Adolf Eichmann to death in 1961. In 1970 the position was taken over by Moshe Bejski, who remained its chairman until 1995: his open and complex interpretation of the 1953 law has left a permanent mark on the Commission’s work.
Now, due to lack of space, the trees have been replaced by inscriptions on walls built for this purpose in the garden.
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