Trees for Peace
The incident shown opposite gave rise to our project “Trees for Peace”.
Shortly after Count Luckner’s death in April 1966, the then President of the Central Council of Jews, Prof. Dr. Herbert Lewin, planted five trees for him in the Thomas Mann Forest in Israel.
The background to this, in our view, extraordinary honor by the highest dignitary of the Jewish people in Germany is the behavior of Felix Count von Luckner towards them, especially during the “brown period” in Germany. While Luckner had previously had no reservations, reservations or other negative feelings towards Jews, this openness continued during the aforementioned period, when it became downright dangerous to maintain such contacts. The National Socialists naturally noticed this and meticulously documented this misconduct. Their later so-called “honor trial” was based, among other things, on the accusations that Luckner had cultivated too easy and thoughtless contact with Jews.
Another reason for the honor, which fortunately for the count remained undiscovered until the end of the war, was the rescue of the Swiss Jew Rosalie Janson from deportation and the associated certain death. You can find more information on this >>> HERE <<<
We are now planning to plant trees ourselves, which may grow and flourish for the goals of our society – peace, international understanding, tolerance and reconciliation – in the future, ideally worldwide, but we would like to start with a first step in Halle (Saale), the headquarters of our society.
You will find more information about the project and the next steps here shortly.