Page 291 - ISRAEL'S CRADLE

The reading hall of the Archive, 1947
In July 1937, the Herzl archive arrived to Jerusalem and was placed in a special room prepared for this in the Zionist Archive. One year previously, Moritz Reichenfeld, one of the last of the executors of Herzl's will, acceded to the pleas of Dr. Herlitz, who had conducted lengthy negotiations with him and with the Jewish Community in Vienna, agreeing to move the Herzl archive to the Zionist Archive in Jerusalem. Reichenfeld had placed a condition in the agreement, whereby the Zionist Archive would appoint a special curator for the Herzl archive. Dr. Bein, who published Herzl's biography in 1934 and had already been well-known among the Zionist leadership in the Land of Israel, was considered the natural and most suitable candidate for the position. And indeed, he was invited to join as a regular employee and as the assistant of the archive manager.
Herzl's archive was packed up in four large crates and sent as the personal cargo of Josef Kastein, who was about to return to the Land of Israel from a lecturing tour in Europe. As part of his duties, Dr. Alex Bein went out to the Port of Haifa to receive the archive. It was only when he arrived there that he realized that the adjacent warehouse had burned down that night while the history of Zionism was fortunate in that the warehouse in which the crates were stored, including Herzl's archive, was spared. The four large crates were loaded on to a truck and Dr. Bein, a driver and an Arab policeman (a hitchhiker) went up to Jerusalem via the short path: Haifa-Jenin-Nablus-Jerusalem.
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