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Rare Documents Belonging to Theodor Herzl Given to Israeli Museum

September 15, 1965
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Two documents bearing on the early life of Theodor Herzl, the founder of political Zionism, were presented to Israel Consul Haim Zohar here today by Mrs. Cecile Koeppel, a friend of the Herzl family in Vienna, who now lives in New York. The documents, school grade certificates issued to Herzl when he was a pupil in the second grade of the Jewish Elementary School in Budapest, in 1868, will be placed in the Herzl Museum in Jerusalem. Written in Hungarian and German, the school certificates indicate that young Herzl was excellent in his studies.

The certificates were given to Mrs. Koeppel by Herzl’s mother. A year after the death of the Zionist leader, Mrs. Koeppel decided to present the certificates to the Herzl Museum in Jerusalem, after consulting Israeli President Zalman Shazar about the disposition of the documents. She had kept the certificates with her even during the years of the Second World War, when she was hidden in a monastery in the south of France. Mrs. Koeppel, who is 81, emigrated to the United States in 1950.

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