Herzl's Grandson Buried on Mt. Herzl

With much fanfare, the grandson of Theodor Herzl was reinterred in the Jerusalem cemetery named for his grandfather on Wednesday.

The remains of Stephen Theodore Norman, son of Herzl’s daughter Trude Neumann, were moved to Israel in honor of Israel’s 60th Independence Day celebration.  Norman, Herzl’s only grandchild, was known to support his grandfather’s ideas.  He visited Israel in 1946 and vowed to return, saying, “to return is somehow to be reborn.”

Later that year, however, Norman took his own life after hearing that his parents had been killed in the Holocaust. 

The Jewish Agency and El Al Airlines took part in the reburial effort, which fulfills Herzl’s dying wishes in 1904 that he and his family be buried in the future State of Israel.

Norman’s remains were exhumed from a Washington, D.C. Jewish cemetery. ''It is not often you can carry out historic, Jewish and Zionist justice. '' said Zev Bielski, chairman of the Jewish Agency. “Today we did. He dedicated his entire life to the Zionist idea. He sacrificed for us, and today we are doing this for him.”