Real photo postcard showing Herzl's son and daughters about a year before his death: Fruma (Truda), Tirza (Paulina the Elder) and Shimon (Hans), published by 'Zion' Vienna. 1903.
The fate of Herzl's son and daughters was tragic, and as if drawn from the world of fairy tales. Herzl's children were not sent to schools, but were educated at home by German and French, English and Austrian private Teachers. After Herzl's death, his orphaned children were left financially destitute. Paulina was then 14, Hans 13, and Truda 11. According to Herzl's will, all three children were to be handed over to foster families. His wife Julie was unable to take care of them financially. The children were taken from her custody, the two girls were given to foster families, and the son was sent to a private boys' school in England. Thus each of them began the tragic trajectory of his life. The eldest Paulina left the foster family and tried to take care of herself, but the situation after the First World War and the great economic crisis adversely affected her, she came to Bordeaux in France and died of typhus in 1930. Hans joined the British Army in World War I, graduated with a master's degree in Cambridge but was unable to rebuild his life. In August 1930, Paulina sent him a telegram to London, saying that she had been arrested in France without identification documents. He released her but was not financially able to buy her a train ticket to London so he had to leave her there. After a month he arrived at the hospital to receive the body of his deceased sister. He was given the body but did not have enough money for Bury her. Following the complex situation he decides to shoot himself and the Jewish community is forced to bury them both in Bordeaux. The third sister Truda married a wealthy Jew who was 20 years older than her. They had a son but eventually in World War II the Germans deported her to Theresienstadt and according to evidence she died there. Truda's husband also perished in the Holocaust, and their son, who was Herzl's only grandson, committed suicide in 1946 after hearing of his parents' deaths.
On September 19, 2006, in an official ceremony, the bones of Hans and Paulina were removed from the Jewish cemetery in Bordeaux. And the next day, September 20, they were buried in the plot of the heads of the World Zionist Organization and the Herzl family on Mount Herzl near their father's grave (Herzl's second daughter, Truda, perished in the Holocaust and her body was cremated).
9x14 cm. Crack top right. Not sent by mail. general condition good.
