Hannah Szenes (Hungarian

Hungarian language

Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....

: Szenes Anikó), often anglicized as Hannah Senesh (July 17, 1921 – November 7, 1944) was a Hungarian

Hungary

Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...

 Jew, one of 37 Jews from the British Mandate for Palestine (now Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

) that were trained by the British army

British Army

The British Army is the land warfare branch of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdom of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England...

 to parachute into Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....

 during the Second World War in order to help save the Jews of Hungary

History of the Jews in Hungary

Hungarian Jews have existed since at least the 11th century. After struggling against discrimination throughout the Middle Ages, by the early 20th century the community grew to be 5% of Hungary's population , and were prominent in science, the arts and business...

, who were about to be deported to the German death camp at Auschwitz

Auschwitz concentration camp

Concentration camp Auschwitz was a network of Nazi concentration and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II...

.

Szenes was arrested at the Hungarian border, imprisoned and tortured, but she refused to reveal details of her mission and was eventually tried and executed by firing squad. She is regarded as a national heroine in Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

, where several streets, the headquarters of the Zionist youth movement

Zionist youth movement

A Zionist youth movement is an organization formed for Jewish children and adolescents for educational, social, and ideological development, including a belief in Jewish nationalism as represented in the State of Israel...

s Israel Hatzeira and a kibbutz

Yad Hana

Yad Hana is a former kibbutz in the Sharon near Route 57, North-central Israel. Covering 2,600 dunams, it is located within the Hefer Valley Regional Council. In 2006 it had a population of 208...

 are named after her, and her poetry is widely known.

Early life

Szenes was born on July 17, 1921, to an assimilated Jewish family in Hungary

Hungary

Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...

. Her father, Béla Szenes, a journalist and playwright, died when she was six years old. She continued to live with her mother, Catherine, and her brother, György (George).

She enrolled in a Protestant private school for girls which also accepted Catholic

Catholicism

Catholicism is a broad term for the body of the Catholic faith, its theologies and doctrines, its liturgical, ethical, spiritual, and behavioral characteristics, as well as a religious people as a whole....

 and Jewish pupils; however, she had to pay twice the regular tuition because she was Jewish. This, along with the realization that the situation of the Jews in Hungary was becoming precarious, prompted Szenes to embrace Judaism

Judaism

Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...

. She announced to her friends that she had become a Zionist and joined Maccabea, a Hungarian Zionist students organization

Zionist youth movement

A Zionist youth movement is an organization formed for Jewish children and adolescents for educational, social, and ideological development, including a belief in Jewish nationalism as represented in the State of Israel...

.

Immigrating to Nahalal

Szenes graduated in 1939 and decided to emigrate to what was then the British Mandate of Palestine in order to study in the Girls' Agricultural School at Nahalal

Nahalal

-External links:** UNESCO* Jewish Agency for Israel*, "Jews made a garden" - aerial photo of Nahalal , and a girl from Girls' Agricultural Training Farm , at Google Books....

. In 1941, she joined Kibbutz

Kibbutz

A kibbutz is a collective community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. Today, farming has been partly supplanted by other economic branches, including industrial plants and high-tech enterprises. Kibbutzim began as utopian communities, a combination of socialism and Zionism...

 Sdot Yam

Sdot Yam

Sdot Yam is a kibbutz in the Haifa District of Israel on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea.It was founded in 1936 and moved to its present site at the southern border of the ancient city and archeological ruins of Caesarea, in 1940...

 and then joined the Haganah

Haganah

Haganah was a Jewish paramilitary organization in what was then the British Mandate of Palestine from 1920 to 1948, which later became the core of the Israel Defense Forces.- Origins :...

, the paramilitary group that laid the foundation of the Israel Defense Forces

Israel Defense Forces

The Israel Defense Forces , commonly known in Israel by the Hebrew acronym Tzahal , are the military forces of the State of Israel. They consist of the ground forces, air force and navy. It is the sole military wing of the Israeli security forces, and has no civilian jurisdiction within Israel...

. In 1943, she enlisted in the British army in the Woman's Auxiliary Air Force as an Aircraftwoman 2nd Class and began her training in Egypt

Egypt

Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...

 as a paratrooper for the British Special Operations Executive

Special Operations Executive

The Special Operations Executive was a World War II organisation of the United Kingdom. It was officially formed by Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Minister of Economic Warfare Hugh Dalton on 22 July 1940, to conduct guerrilla warfare against the Axis powers and to instruct and aid local...

 (SOE).

Arrest and torture

In March 1944, she and colleagues Yoel Palgi and Peretz Goldstein were parachuted into Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....

 and joined a partisan group

Partisans (Yugoslavia)

The Yugoslav Partisans, or simply the Partisans were a Communist-led World War II anti-fascist resistance movement in Yugoslavia...

. After landing, they learned the Germans had already occupied Hungary, so the men decided to call off the mission as too dangerous. Szenes continued on and headed for the Hungarian border. At the border, she and her companions were arrested by Hungarian gendarmes, who found her British military transmitter, used to communicate with the SOE and other partisans. Hannah was taken to a prison, stripped, tied to a chair, then whipped and clubbed for three days. The guards wanted to know the code for her transmitter so they could find out who the parachutists were and misdirect others. Transferred to a Budapest prison, Hannah was repeatedly interrogated and cruelly tortured, but she only revealed her name and refused to provide the transmitter code, even when her mother was also arrested. They threatened to kill her mother if she did not cooperate, but Hannah held firm (and probably saved her mother's life as a result).

Whilst in prison, Szenes used a mirror to flash signals out of the window to prisoners in other cells and communicated using large cut-out letters that she placed in her cell window one at a time and by drawing the Magen David in the dust. She tried to keep their spirits up by singing, and through all the things Szenes went through she still kept her spirit high and stayed true to her mission.

Trial and execution

She was tried for treason

Treason

In law, treason is the crime that covers some of the more extreme acts against one's sovereign or nation. Historically, treason also covered the murder of specific social superiors, such as the murder of a husband by his wife. Treason against the king was known as high treason and treason against a...

 on October 28, 1944. There was an eight-day postponement to give the judges more time to find a verdict, followed by another postponement, this one because of the appointment of a new Judge Advocate. She was executed by a firing squad. She kept diary entries until her last day, November 7, 1944 when she was executed by a German firing squad. One of them read: "In the month of July, I shall be twenty-three/I played a number in a game/The dice have rolled. I have lost," and another: "I loved the warm sunlight."
Her diary was published in Hebrew in 1946. Her remains were brought to Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

 in 1950 and buried in the cemetery on Mount Herzl

Mount Herzl

Mount Herzl , also Har HaZikaron , is the national cemetery of Israel on the west side of Jerusalem. It is named for Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern political Zionism. Herzl's tomb lies at the top of the hill. Yad Vashem, which commemorates the Holocaust, lies to the west of Mt. Herzl....

, Jerusalem. Her tombstone was brought to Israel in November 2007 and placed in Sdot Yam

Sdot Yam

Sdot Yam is a kibbutz in the Haifa District of Israel on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea.It was founded in 1936 and moved to its present site at the southern border of the ancient city and archeological ruins of Caesarea, in 1940...

.

During the trial of Rudolf Kastner

Rudolf Kastner

Rudolf Israel Kastner was a Jewish-Hungarian journalist and lawyer who became known for facilitating the departure of Jews out of Nazi-occupied Hungary during the Holocaust...

, Hannah's mother, Catherina Senesh, testified that during the time her daughter was imprisoned, Kastner's people had advised her not to obtain a lawyer for her daughter. Further, she recalled a conversation with Kastner after the war, telling him, "I don't say that you could have saved my daughter Hannah, but that you didn't try - it makes it harder for me that nothing was done."

After the Cold War

Cold War

The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...

, a Hungarian military court officially exonerated her. Her kin in Israel were informed on November 5, 1993.

Poetry, songs and plays

Szenes was a poet

Poetry

Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...

 and playwright, writing both in Hungarian and Hebrew. The following are four of her better known poems. The best known of these is Halikha LeKesariya ("A Walk to Caesarea"), commonly known as Eli, Eli ("My God, My God"). The well-known melody was composed by David Zahavi. Many singers have sung it, including Regina Spektor

Regina Spektor

Regina Ilyinichna Spektor is a Russian American singer-songwriter and pianist. Her music is associated with the anti-folk scene centered in New York City's East Village.-Early life:...

 and Sophie Milman

Sophie Milman

Sophie Milman is a Russian-born jazz vocalist who currently lives in Canada.After emigrating from Russia in the early 1990s, Milman, who is of Jewish heritage, spent most of her childhood years in Israel where she listened extensively to jazz...

. It was used to close some versions of the film Schindler's List

Schindler's List

Schindler's List is a 1993 American film about Oskar Schindler, a German businessman who saved the lives of more than a thousand mostly Polish-Jewish refugees during the Holocaust by employing them in his factories. The film was directed by Steven Spielberg, and based on the novel Schindler's Ark...

:

My God, My God, I pray that these things never end,

The sand and the sea,

The rustle of the waters,

Lightning of the Heavens,

The prayer of Man.

אלי, אלי, שלא יגמר לעולם

החול והים

רשרוש של המים

ברק השמים

תפילת האדם

The voice called, and I went.

I went, because the voice called.

The following lines are from the last poem she wrote, "Ashre Hagafrur", after she was parachuted into a partisan camp in Yugoslavia:

,אַשְׁרֵי הַגַּפְרוּר שֶׁנִּשְׂרַף וְהִצִּית לֶהָבוֹת

.אַשְׁרֵי הַלְּהָבָה שֶׁבָּעֲרָה בְּסִתְרֵי לְבָבוֹת

...אַשְׁרֵי הַלְבָבוֹת שֶׁיָדְעוּ לַחְדוֹל בְּכָבוֹד

.אַשְׁרֵי הַגַּפְרוּר שֶׁנִּשְׂרַף וְהִצִּית לֶהָבוֹת

Blessed is the match consumed in kindling flame.

Blessed is the flame that burns in the secret fastness of the heart.

Blessed is the heart with strength to stop its beating for honor's sake.

Blessed is the match consumed in kindling flame.

The following lines were found in Hanna's death cell after her execution:

One - two - three... eight feet long

Two strides across, the rest is dark...

Life is a fleeting question mark

One - two - three... maybe another week.

Or the next month may still find me here,

But death, I feel is very near.

I could have been 23 next July

I gambled on what mattered most, the dice were cast. I lost.

In popular culture

A film about Szenes' life entitled Hanna's War

Hanna's War

Hanna's War is a 1988 film co-written and directed by Menahem Golan. The film is based on The Diaries Of Hanna Senesh and the biographical novel A Great Wind Cometh by Yoel Palgi. It is a biopic detailing the true story of Hannah Szenes.-Plot:...

 was released in 1988 and directed by Menahem Golan

Menahem Golan

Menahem Golan is an Israeli director and producer. He has produced movies for such stars as Sean Connery, Sylvester Stallone, Chuck Norris, Jean-Claude Van Damme, and Charles Bronson, and was known for a period as a producer of comic book-style movies like Masters of the Universe, Superman IV:...

. She was portrayed by actress Maruschka Detmers

Maruschka Detmers

Maruschka Detmers is a Dutch actress. She moved to France as a teenager, where she captured the attention of director Jean-Luc Godard. In 1983, she made her dramatic debut under Godard's direction in Prénom Carmen...

.

External links

• Teacher's Study Guide
• Hannah Senesh Legacy foundation
• Jewish Community Day School, Brooklyn, New York
• Blessed Is The Match, a documentary film
  Documentary film
  Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
  
  about Hannah
• Hannah Szenes Biography at J-Grit: The Internet Index of Tough Jews
• "Eli, Eli": an example of a modern setting of this poem