I saw the film “Hannah’s War” about the heroine and martyr Hannah Senesh on TV. I feel that it is a film everyone should see. It is very moving. Hannah Senesh is one of Israel’s most important heroines. She was born on July 17, 1921 in Budapest, Hungary, and died on November 7, 1944 in Budapest, murdered by a firing squad at age 23, after refusing a blindfold, but looking straight at the pro-Nazi Hungarian firing squad that killed her.
After experiencing anti-Semitism in Budapest, she left her home in 1939 and immigrated to British-controlled Palestine, the name the ancient Romans gave Israel 1,500 years ago in their attempt to erase the knowledge of Israel from Jewish minds, and settled at Kibbutz Sedot Yam. In 1943, she joined the British Army and volunteered to parachute into Europe. In 1944, she volunteered for a British mission to rescue European Jews. She was a Special Operations Executive member, one of 37 Jewish SOE recruits from Mandate Palestine parachuted by the British into Yugoslavia during the Second World War. She was captured, brutally tortured, but refused to reveal anything about her fellow SOE soldiers and the codes used by them, and she was executed for treason.
In 1950, the Israeli government brought her body to Israel with many military honors and buried her on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem where Israel heroes are buried.
She was a poet. Many Israelis consider her poem “A Walk to Caesarea,” usually called “Eli, Eli,” “My God, My God,” after its opening words, as Israel’s unofficial anthem. It is commonly played and sung on Yom HaShoah. Israel’s Holocaust Memorial Day.
The following is an English translation of the song.
My God, my God,
may it never end –
the sand and the sea,
the rustle of the water,
the brilliance of the sky,
the prayer of man.
Viewers can hear the song sung by different singers on You Tube, as well as see her story there.
Please see Ben Hecht’s book, “Perfidy” which discusses the trial of Rudolph Kastner (Kasztner) who became a high ranking Israeli official after Israeli independence and who was accused of refusing to help Hannah when she was captured. When Rudolph a collaborator with the Nazis was exposed the Israeli establishment (Ben Gurion, Weitzman, the Israel first State Attorney Haim Cohen etc.) all sought to protect a “Jewish” Nazi war criminal. The following is taken from an article in The Jewish Week, April 2, 2010 by Jonathan Mark, ” Hanna’s intended contact in Budapest was Rudolf Kastner, a Jewish Agency operator who was negotiating with Eichmann, himself based in Budapest, for the release of Hungarian Jews. After Hannah was captured (as a British prisoner of war) and was being held and tortured in a Budapest prison, Catherine Senesh, Hannah’s mother, who lived in Budapest, went to Kastner, begging him to intervene with the Nazis, as Kastner was somehow a privileged character under Eichmann’s protection. (Kastner, in turn, provided positive affadavits at the Nuremburg trial that helped free several of Eichamann’s top Nazi associates.). Hanna’s mother kept seeking Kastner’s help but Kastner wouldn’t give her the time of day.” Also see the book written in 2017 by British Jewish historian Paul Bogdanor “Kasztner’s Crime”, where he says, “Kasztner was a collaborator with the Nazis and a betrayer of the Zionist movement and Jewish people.”.
You might like the movie about the Jewish French mime Marcel Marceau who saved Jewish people during WWII before he was famous. The movie is called “Resistance” with Jesse Eisenberg.
Thank you. I will watch the movie.
Israel
Thanks. I look forward to watching it.
I tried searching for “Hannah’s War” but all I found were books. Hannah Senesh was a true hero. It is well that they celebrate her today. Thank you for sharing her story.
Another hero who helped save Jews and POWs during WWII was the Catholic priest Hugh O’Flaherty. I saw a movie about him called the Scarlet and the Black. It was a very good movie with two great actors. Gregory Peck played the priest and Christopher Plummer was his nazi rival. I thought Peck had more class than Plummer but both were good. It’s free on Youtube.
You can find Hannah’s War on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/Hannas-War-VHS-Ellen-Burstyn/dp/6301269799/ref=cm_cr_srp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8.