December 2, 2007 / 22 Kislev  5768

Remains of Grandson of Founder of Zionist Movement to be reinterred in Jerusalem on December 5th 2007

The Government of Israel and the World Zionist Organization will repay the historic and moral debt to Binyamin Ze'ev (Theodor ) Herzl.

On December 5th at 12:30pm the remains of Stephen Theodore Norman, grandson of Theodor Herzl, founder of the Zionist Movement, will be reinterred in the plot for Zionist leaders on Mt. Herzl in Jerusalem. Two days prior, on December 3rd at 10:00am in Washington DC, there will be a memorial ceremony for Stephen Theodore Norman at the Adas Israel Congregation where he was buried in 1946, and his coffin will then be transferred to Israel.

Stephen Norman was the only grandchild of the founder of Political Zionism Theodor Herzl. He was born in Vienna in 1918 and sent to boarding school in England. On the completion of high school, Stephen Norman joined the British Army and served as an officer in the Royal Artillery in the Far East during WW II. His mother, Trude Neumann -- Herzl's youngest daughter -- and father Richard, perished in Theresienstadt during the Holocaust.

After his discharge in India in 1945, Stephen Norman made a short visit to Palestine and was deeply impressed, having read his grandfather's writings on the ideal of a Jewish national home. In an article he wrote following his visit, he described with wonder the "normal" young people he saw in Palestine:

"These children bore the mark of freedom. I thought of the dark, sallow, unhappy Jewish children of Europe. I had seen pictures of their faces; their youthful frames had borne the features of old men and women, and now I saw these little ones who look like children again."

Norman served as a scientific attachֳ© in the British Embassy in Washington and there he commited suicide at the age of 28 upon learning of the death of his parents in the Shoa.(Holocaust)

Last year, The World Zionist Organization and the Govenrment of Israel, in cooperation with the Public Council for the Commemoration of Binyamin Ze'ev Herzl reburied the remains of Pauline and Hans, Herzl's other two children, on Mt. Herzl in accordance with Herzl's explicit last wish to be buried with his family in the future Jewish State.

Recently, through efforts spearheaded by Jerry Klinger, President of the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation in Washington D.C. that Stephen Norman's remains be reburied alongside those of his family in Jerusalem, the Government of Israel and the World Zionist Organization, in cooperation with the Public Council for the Commemoration of Binyamin Ze'ev Herzl agreed to fulfill a moral and historic debt to the founder of Zionism.

Thus the reunification of the family of Binyamin Ze'ev Herzl on Mt. Herzl in Jerusalem will be complete.

Addressing the ceremony will be Minister for Diaspora Affairs, Isaac Herzog; Chairman of the World Zionist Organization and Jewish Agency for Israel, Zeev Bielski and chairman of the Public Council for the Commemoration of Binyamin Ze'ev Herzl, Dr. Daniel Polisar.