BORDEAUX/JERUSALEM (EJP)--- The bodies of two of the children of the founder of Zionism were due to be flown to Israel from France on Tuesday night following a ceremony in Bordeaux.

Following years of controversy the Israeli government and Sephardi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar both gave the go-ahead last month for the coffins of Hans and Pauline Herzl to be reburied next to the grave of their father on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem.

It fulfills a more than hundred-year-old request by their father Theodor Herzl that his immediate family be buried next to him in Israel if a Jewish state was to be established in Palestine.

Herzl’s third child, daughter Trudi, is believed to have died at the Theresienstadt concentration camp during the Second World War and her burial place is unknown.

Communal ceremony

The ceremony at the Bordeaux Jewish cemetery was attended by president of the World Zionist Organisation Zeev Bielski as well as local French communal leaders.

Speaking ahead of the event, chief rabbi of Bordeaux Chai Krief said he believed it was very important.

“There has been a very special feeling in our community in recent days," Krief said. "There’s been great excitement among our members, and we are happy to be carrying out Herzl’s will, delighted to be fulfilling his last request."

Born in Budapest in 1860, the Vienna-educated lawyer and journalist came to believe that anti-Semitism could not be resolved through assimilation, leaving the creation of a separate Jewish nation as the only viable solution. 

Theodor Herzl, founder of Zionism

Herzl founded Zionism after publishing his book The Jewish State in 1896 and the first Zionist Congress was held in Basel, Switzerland the following year.

When he died in 1904 at the age of 44, Herzl was buried in Vienna, but after the establishment of the State of Israel his body was moved to Israel and reburied in a state ceremony in 1949 when the state of Israel was created. 

Both Hans and Pauline died in 1930 after suffering from depression throughout their lives. Pauline killed herself through a drug overdose of Morphine and Hans then shot himself when he heard the news.

For decades, the former leaders of the Zionist Organisation avoided showing Herzl’s familly story because it was so tragic.

"I personnaly think there is nothing to hide. This is history and you can’t change it. We do however have the duty of fulfilling Herzl’s will. That is what we did today," David Roche, director of the Jewish Agency in France, said.  

"Since Herzl was brought to Israel, vacant spaces were left next to his tomb, for his children. Today we implemented his will at last."

Closing the circle

Herzl’s request for his children to buried alongside him and the site of their burial up-till-now was revealed by Israeli historian Ariel Feldestein.

Initally Amar refused to allow the pair to be buried in Israel, both because suicide is prohibited by Jewish law and because Hans is believed to have converted to Christianity.