The remains of Shimon and Rivka Herzl, the grandparents of modern political Zionism’s founder, Theodor Herzl, are being brought from Belgrade, Serbia, to be reinterred beside his grave on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem in the coming days.
A high-level state funeral and burial ceremony is scheduled to take place on August 5, coinciding with the 77th anniversary of Theodor Herzl's own reburial in 1949, when his remains were exhumed and brought to Jerusalem from Vienna.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog have both confirmed that they will attend the ceremony.
The initiative is being led by World Zionist Organization (WZO) Chairman Yaakov Hagoel in coordination with the Serbian authorities and the local Jewish community.
Hagoel secured the repatriation with the aid of an agreement for the exhumation from Željka Cvijanović, president of Republika Srpska, during her visit to Mount Herzl on a WZO-organized trip to Israel in 2021. Although the diplomatic arrangement was established years ago, the transfer faced multiple delays over the subsequent four years due to regional security challenges and logistical hurdles before finally moving forward.
Herzl's grandparents inspired his Zionist thinking
Shimon Loeb Herzl was an Orthodox Jew who served in honorary leadership roles in the Zemun community in Serbia.
Influenced by his close ties to the town’s spiritual leader and early Zionist forerunner Rabbi Yehuda Alkalai, Shimon became an enthusiastic advocate for establishing a Jewish state in the Land of Israel. Shimon and Rivka helped inspire, guide, and influence Theodor's Zionist thinking that would create the movement that he later founded.
With the exception of Herzl’s third daughter, Trude Herzl, who perished in the Holocaust (at the Theresienstadt ghetto), and whose exact final resting place remains unknown, the arrival and reburial of his grandparents will reunite the founder of Zionism with all his immediate family members, joining his parents, his sister Pauline, two of his children (Pauline and Hans), and his only grandson, Stephen Theodor Norman, who rest together on the mount.