Last Herzl family member reburied in Jerusalem

The remains of Stephen Theodore Norman were re-interred in Jerusalem's Mount Herzl cemetery in the plot for Zionist leaders.

By ETGAR LEFKOVITS
Theodor Herzl 88 (photo credit: )
Theodor Herzl 88
(photo credit: )
In a symbolic closing of a circle, the remains of the only grandson of Zionist visionary Theodor Herzl was reburied on Wednesday in Jerusalem. The remains of Stephen Theodore Norman were re-interred in Jerusalem's Mount Herzl cemetery in the plot for Zionist leaders. The early afternoon ceremony was attended by Diaspora Minister Isaac Herzog and Jewish Agency Chairman Ze'ev Bielski. Earlier this week, Norman's remains were flown to Israel following a memorial ceremony at Adas Israel Congregation in Washington DC, where he was buried in 1946. Born in Vienna in 1918, Herzl's grandson was sent to boarding school in England and then joined the British Army, where he served as a Royal Artillery officer in the Far East during World War II. After his discharge in India in 1945, 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 then went on to serve as a scientific attaché in the British Embassy in Washington. But devastated after learning of the deaths of his parents during the Holocaust, he committed suicide at the age of 28 by jumping off a Washington bridge. His mother, Trude Neumann - Herzl's youngest daughter - and father Richard perished in the Theresienstadt ghetto during the Holocaust. The remains of Herzl's two other children, Hans and Paulina, were reburied on Mount Herzl last year, in keeping with the Zionist pioneer's will that his body and those of his close family members be moved to the Jewish state he envisioned. Herzl, his parents and his sister were previously buried in the Jerusalem cemetery for the military and Zionist leaders, which bears his name. The Wednesday reburial completed the reunification of the Herzl family in the Jerusalem cemetery plot.