The Transference of Herzl’s Remains to Palestine

Director Reichenfeld, one of Dr. Theodore Herzl’s close friends and executors, touches on the question of the projected transfer of Dr. Herzl’s remains to Palestine, in the course of an interview appearing here in the current issue of the Zionist weekly, “Die Stimme”.

There has been a revival recently, the paper explains, of reports about Dr. Herzl’s remains being about to be transferred shortly to Palestine for re-interment. For that reason we asked Director Reichenfeld to tell us how matters stand.

His reply is: At the Congress of 1929 I urged the transference of Herzl’s remains to Palestine. The matter has been left where it was since then, largely on account of the events that followed in Palestine. It seems that several people in America or Palestine intend to carry the plan through now. I must make it clear, however, that Herr Kremenitzki, who was in Palestine recently, has said nothing to me about that, so that I assume that he, too, knows nothing about it. Whether the matter is now more actual, I cannot judge. At any rate, the transference of Herzl’s remains to Palestine cannot be thought of without the intervention of the Executive of the Zionist Organisation, since it has bearings also in the political sphere. Herzl did not indicate in his will the place which is to be his last resting place. There are only verbal statements in existence.

I would only like to emphasise, Director Reichenfeld continued, that the transference of the extensive Herzl archives seems to me at this time more urgent. We have taken steps in this direction in Jerusalem, but it will have to take some time to settle this question, because there is a new biography of Herzl due next year, which promises to be more important than the previous biographies, and the archives will be needed until that time.

Nearly seven years have passed since the Vienna Zionist Congress, when Dr. Sokolov vividly recalled the obligation resting upon the Zionist Organisation to bring the body of Dr. Herzl to its final resting place in Palestine, Judge Bernard A. Rosenblatt, former American member of the Zionist Executive, who is now in Palestine, wrote in a recent issue of the “Palestine Bulletin”. He told with the eloquence of which the President of the world Zionist Organisation is a master, Judge Rosenblatt continued, how Dr. Wolfsohn, the trusted lieutenant of Dr. Herzl, related the well-known episode in his Palestine trip of 1898. Herzl, in the company of Wolfsohn, stood on Mount Carmel, looking out over the panorama of Haifa Bay, with a full view of the Mediterranean Sea on the other side of the peninsula. Enthralled by the prospect before him, Herzl expressed the desire that when his time come his body might be buried on Mount Carmel overlooking the city of Haifa, which he was to immortalise in his “Altneuland”.

There were technical difficulties in the way of carrying out that obligation when Dr. Sokolov delivered his speech in 1925, but now that the obstacles are largely removed, it is high time that the task should be performed as befits the holy obligations resting upon us. Nor should we wait for action upon a movement that may be launched in Vienna, London or New York, with possible sectional differences of opinion, and a lack of appreciation of the factors involved. Palestine Jewry should take the load in this work at once, and acting upon the sanctions already secured at the Zionist Congress, should organise itself for the redemption of the obligation to our dead leader.

A fitting place can be found on Mount Carmel on one of the many superb heights with a view overlooking the City of Haifa on the peninsula between Haifa Bay and the Mediterranean Sea.

Indeed, a little while ago, a representative of an American group that owns a tract of land on Mount Carmel has authorised me to offer a plot between fifty and one hundred dunams as an outright gift to the Keren Kayemeth to be used as a mausoleum and memorial to Theodore Herzl.

TO CONVEY THE BODY OF HERZL TO PALESTINE WITH FIRST SHIP THAT SHALL ENTER HAIFA HARBOUR AFTER IT’S COMPLETION

Such a memorial should be more than a mere passive object of devotion in honour of the father of the Zionist movement, Judge Rosenblatt proceeded. It should serve also as a living monument for the hopes and aspirations of all Jews in the land of Israel. Perhaps this can be best achieved by associating the name of Herzl with the institution of which he was the prime founder, the Zionist Congress. Every two years, the Jews of the world spend at least £25,000 in convoking a Zionist Congress in some European city to which representatives and spectators journey from New York and Warsaw, from London and Jerusalem. With a like expenditure for a single Zionist Congress, which will be held on Mount Carmel there can be erected in close proximity to the Herzl Mausoleum a permanent Zionist Congress Hall, at which most of the great gatherings of the Jewish Agency may take place, besides serving as a Convention Hall for periodical meetings in international conventions of Jewish doctors, engineers and other professional men.

We shalll then have established a physical basis for a Jewish spiritual centre, appropriately overlooking the “City of the Future”, as Herzl envisaged it, with its magnificent port, its great industries, and its life-conveying commerce.

Let us begin, Judge Rosenblatt concluded, by the organisation of a Representative Palestine Committee for that purpose, with braches in Europe and America, making it our objective to convey the body of Herzl to Palestine with the first ship that shall enter Haifa Harbour after the completion of the Port of Haifa.