The story of the burial of Hans and Paulina on Mt. Herzl is a long and complex one. It began in 1903 when they were only 12 and 13, and 27 years before their deaths in 1930. It was in that year that Theodor Herzl composed what would indeed be his last will and testament. In it, with the nascent Zionist movement he founded only six years old, and with absolutely no tangible achievements in hand suggesting that our ancestral Jewish homeland would ever be redeemed, the 43-year old visionary nevertheless instructed that he and all members of his immediate family be interred in the Land of Israel once the Jewish state he dreamed of establishing there was to come into being. (To those who rebuke Herzl for having suggested in the same year that a temporary Jewish enclave be established in Uganda in order to bring about immediate relief to Jewish suffering, and who cite this proposal in arguing that Herzl’s connection to the land of his forefathers was tenuous at best, this section of his will constitutes a powerful rejoinder.) And indeed, shortly after the declaration of Israel’s independence, the new government began repaying its debt to the country’s founding father by arranging for his burial in 1949 on what was to become Mt. Herzl, and brought his parents and sister to rest there as well shortly thereafter. But what of his wife and children?

The answer reveals the heartbreaking calamity of Herzl's personal life. His wife Julie, who was psychotic, died only a few years after her husband at the age of 35, apparently of drug-related causes. She was cremated in accordance with her wishes, and the urn containing her ashes was purportedly lost by her son to whom it had been entrusted. Trude, Herzl’s youngest daughter, found her death at the hands of the Nazis in Thereizensdadt, to which she was deported in 1943. The whereabouts of her remains have never been known. The circumstances of the deaths of Hans and Paulina are hardly less tragic. Paulina died of unclear causes, generally believed to be connected to her addiction to morphine, after years in and out of hospitals for treatment of mental illness. Her brother Hans, who suffered from mental problems of his own, became despondent over his sister’s death – a condition compounded by his profound sense of having lived a failed life - and committed suicide just before her funeral (something he had contemplated for years). Arrangements for his burial were further complicated by the fact that he had years before converted to Christianity, though apparently he later repudiated that act. The two siblings were buried side-by-side in Bordeaux, France, where they died. There they lay until this week, despite the explicit request in Hans' suicide note that the two be buried next to their father in Vienna, and despite Herzl's clear directives to the contrary as well.

The reasons for this range from discomfort and embarrassment over the narrative of the lives and deaths of the members of Herzl's immediate family, to opposition to their re-interment on religious grounds. In any case, his wishes – though considered by the World Zionist Organization, the Jewish Agency, and the Government of Israel at various times over the years – were until now disregarded. That a variety of factors have now coalesced finally allowing the family to rest together in peace, is perhaps an indication of national maturation, a signal of our ability to honor the visionary of the Jewish state as a very real and accessible person rather than as a near-deity, his human dimension only adding to our appreciation of his greatness rather than detracting from the magnitude of his triumph.

At the same time, this occasion of having finally discharged our responsibility in executing one portion of his will, should also serve as a reminder that we are still accountable regarding other dimensions of it. Herzl's legacy is about the future and not only the past. In one of the last messages he left us, published only three months before he died, Herzl wrote, "I truly believe that even after we possess our land, Zionism will not cease to be an ideal. For Zionism includes not only the yearning for a plot of promised land legally acquired for our weary people, but also the yearning for ethical and spiritual fulfillment."

In one way or another, we are all Herzl’s children, and it was an honor and a privilege to have played a tiny part in bringing our siblings home to rest. But now that they are lying in peace in that "plot of promised land" their father so yearned for, it behooves us all – and the World Zionist Organization in particular - to redouble our efforts in laboring for the creation of the exemplary society that was at the foundation of the Zionist dream from its inception. I for one still feel the weight on my shoulders.

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