Israel on Wednesday buried the remains of two children of
Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, fulfilling a wish their father made more than a century ago.

In a ceremony at Mount Herzl Cemetery attended by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and other senior officials, Hans and Pauline Herzl's remains were buried alongside their father's. The remains were brought to Israel from France, where they were disinterred earlier this week.

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"Today, by bringing the bones of Pauline and Hans we are completing the mission and completing a historic circle," Olmert said.

Herzl, who died in 1904 at age 44, was buried in Vienna, Austria, but specified in his will that he wanted his body, and those of his close relatives, moved to the Jewish state he hoped would one day be created.

In 1949, a year after Israel's independence, Herzl's body was brought to Jerusalem and buried in the national cemetery that bears his name. But his children remained buried in Europe.

All three of Herzl's children died tragically. Pauline suffered from mental illness and died in 1930, apparently of a drug overdose. Hans, who converted to Christianity, committed suicide when he learned of her death.

Herzl's youngest daughter, Trude, died in a Nazi concentration camp during the Holocaust, and her body has never been found.

Sephardi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar had issued a religious ruling allowing for the reburial of the remains. Some rabbis had objected to the reburial, since Hans converted to Christianity and committed suicide. Jewish law prohibits certain burial privileges for people who commit suicide.

Olmert thanked Amar for finding a basis in Jewish law that permitted the ceremony.

Herzl was heavily influenced by the 1895 case of Alfred Dreyfus - a high-ranking Jewish officer in the French army who was wrongfully convicted of treason and jailed on Devil's Island. He was later cleared of any wrongdoing.

The following year, Herzl published his seminal work, "The Jewish State," turning the young journalist into the leading proponent for the establishment of an independent homeland for the Jewish people. He later founded the World Zionist Organization.