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The 1978 Memorial Day stamp depicts one of the 180 children's paintings which comprise the mural facing the main Hall of Remembrance of the Petah Tiqwa "Yad Lebanim" Museum -the first and largest living memorial in Israel.
The theme of the mural is the outcome of the Museum's search for a way of perpetuating the memory of the fallen by giving expression to the thoughts passing through the minds of Israel youth confronted with bereavement - something with which we have been faced for all too many long years.
The Yom Kippur War which came upon us so suddenly, left its mark on the hearts of the children. It was no short-term episode and the children endured it hour by hour and day after day and their concern and fears for the safety of their fathers and brothers lasted for weeks and months.
Pupils of the "Yad Lebanim" school were regular visitors to the Museum. It was obvious that they lived out the war and everything connected with it with all their being and that death was something very real to them. They demonstrated their feelings of bereavement when the husband of one of their teachers fell in action and when a friend lost his father... they walked around in a daze and it seemed as though the fear of war was reflected in their tender eyes and hearts.
Their teachers wondered what could be done to make things easier for the children and how they could be helped to give vent to their 'feelings by giving expression to what was in their he arts and demonstrate their gratitude to those who had given their lives on the field of battle.
It was then that the idea was put forward of proposing to the children that they give expression to their feeling in whatever way they felt to be most appropriate - by writing an essay or poem, or by a painting. Numerous suggestions were made and in the end, it was unanimously decided that a floral painting would be their memorial - "flowers, not graves as the children put it, "for graves signify finality - despair and mourning - feelings which were so unlike those in the hearts of the men who went forth to battle never to return. And the fallen were themselves like beautiful flowers - full of love; hungry for life and with an affinity to nature, the soil and their homeland".
From the hundreds of works submitted, some 400 reached the stage of final selection and of those, 180 were accepted.
For the first Memorial Day following the Yom Kippur War the children and their teachers created a truly wonderful tableau, full of feeling and innocence - "In Memoriam". It soon became apparent that the achievement of these child-artists far exceeded their hopes, and the mural became a lodestone for the constant stream of visitors from all over the country who came to see it and fall under its spell.
In accordance with the tradition of commemorating each Memorial Day with a stamp in honour of the fallen of Israel's Defence Army, the Post Office is this year producing a stamp depicting the "Flowers" designed by the young artists of the "Mother of the Settlements" - the great-grandchildren of the founders of century-old Petah Tiqwa.
