Hannah Szenes

Hannah Szenes or Chana Senesh (1921-1944), of Hungarian origin, was one of the 37 Juives people living in Palestine, now Israel, who followed the British special drive to be parachuted or infiltrated in Europe in order to help to save the Jews about to be off-set with the death camp of Auschwitz. It was stopped at the Hungarian, imprisoned and tortured border, but refused to reveal the details of its mission and was finally considered and shot. It is a heroin in Israel: among the streets bearing a name of woman, his is to it that which most frequently returns (even in front of that of Golda Meir), and its poems are very known.

Genealogy

comparable Jewish family, in Hungary.

His/her father: Béla, journalist and dramatic author.

His/her mother: Katrina

His/her brother: Giora.

Biography

First years

1921 . July 17th, birth of Hannah Szenes.

His/her father dies when it is six years old.

It continues to live with his/her mother and her brother.

It enters a Protestant private school for girls, who accepts catholic and Jewish pupils.

Carrying out the increasing precariousness of the situation of the Jews in Hungary, Szenes embraces the Jewish religion. She announces with her friends that she became Jewish and joined Maccabea , an organization Hungarian coed Zionist.

Nahalal

1939 .

*Szenes obtains its diploma.

*Elle decides to emigrate in Palestine, under British mandate at this time, to study at the school of agriculture for girls of Nahalal.

1941 . It joined the Kibboutz Sedot Yam and then the Haganah, the paramilitary group which founded the Defense forces of Israel.

1943 . It engages in the British army and begins its drive in Egypt as parachutist for the secret service Special Operations Executive (SOE).

Arrest and torture

1944 .

*Mars. It is parachuted in Yugoslavia with two male colleagues, Yoel Palgi and Peretz Goldstein. They join a group of partisans. After their landing, they learn that the Germans already invaded Hungary, which leads the two men to stop the mission, that they consider too dangerous. It only continues and moves towards the Hungarian border. At the border, it is stopped by Hungarian gendarmes, who find the broadcasting transmitter British that it carries and that it uses to communicate with the SOE and the other partisans. It is taken along to the prison of Budapest, attached to a chair, naked, whipped and struck with blows of stick during several hours. The guards want to know the code of its transmitter, so as to be able to locate the other parachutists. It does not give them, even when they bring his/her mother in her cell and also threaten it of torture.

*En prison, it uses a mirror to send signals to the Jews held in the other cells, and communicates with them by using large cut out Hebraic letters, which it one by one places on its window and while drawing star of David in dust. It tries to maintain their moral while singing.

Judgment and execution

* October 28th. She is judged for treason. The verdict is pushed back twice: the first, to give a eight days deadline additional to the judges, and the second because of the nomination of a new assessor.

* November 7th. It is carried out before the judges returned their decision.

After its death

1946 . Publication of its Hebrew newspaper.

1950 . Its remainders are brought back to Israel and are buried with the cemetery of the Mont Herzl, Jerusalem.

1993 . After the cold war, on November 5th, its family in Israel is informed that a Hungarian military court officially cleared it.

Works

Hannah Szenes held its newspaper until its last day.

Szenes was a poet and an author of theater. She wrote as well in Hungarian as in Hebrew. Here four of its best poems.

*Le more known is Halikha LeKesariya (" One strolls in Caesarea"), commonly indicated by Eli, Eli (" My God, My Dieu"), that many singers sang, there Regina Spektor and Sophie Milman, and who was used to close certain versions of the film the List of Schindler:

My God, my God, made that these things never take fine,

sand and sea,

rush of water,

crash of the sky,

the prayer of the Man.

the voice called, and I came.

I came, because the voice called.

*Voici the last song which she wrote after being parachuted in a camp of partisans in Yugoslavia:

Blessed either the match which is consumed like glazing bar in the flame.

Blessed either the flame which burns in the secret fortress of the heart.

Blessed either the enough robust heart to stop beating for the honor.

Blessed either the match which is consumed like glazing bar in the flame.

*Les following lines was found in the cell of Hannah after its execution:

One - two - three… eight feet length

Two strides, the rest is dark…

the life is a transitory question mark

One - two - three… perhaps another week.

Or the next month will be able to find me still here,

But death, I feel it near.

I would have been 23 years old next July.

I played with what imported more, the dice rolled. I lost.

References

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