Hannah Szenes (jan 1, 1921 – jan 1, 1944)

Description:

Born to an assimilated Hungarian literary family, Szenes turns to Zionism as a teenager, emigrates in 1939, and joins a kibbutz. She volunteers for a British-organized unit of Palestinian Jewish parachutists sent into occupied Europe to aid Allied airmen and contact Jewish communities, and drops into Yugoslavia in 1944. Crossing into Hungary, she is captured, imprisoned, and tortured — refusing to reveal her radio codes even when her mother is threatened in front of her — and is executed by firing squad at twenty-three. Her poems, especially Eli Eli, enter the Hebrew canon, and she becomes the central figure of the small, largely failed, but morally significant attempt to reach European Jewry from the Yishuv.

Added to timeline:

Date: