Hannah Senesh!

On the eve of the Holocaust, many left Europe for Palestine to save themselves. Very few went back to save others. Hannah Did.

Hannah Senesh: “Blessed is the heart with strength to stop its beating for honor's sake. Blessed is the match consumed in kindling flame.” These words foreshadowed Hannah's readiness to sacrifice herself to help Jewish people under threat by Nazi Germany.

In anticipation of our visit this week to Prague and Budapest, last week while in NYC, we saw the one-woman show, Hannah Senesh, which tells her true story, a heroic 18 year old Jew who escaped from Hungary in 1939 to the safety of British Mandate Palestine. She studied at a girls’ agricultural school in Nahalal and settled in kibbutz Sdot Yam. There she joined Haganah and volunteered for a daring Special Airborne Operations mission to parachute back into Europe to save Jews from the Holocaust. Her intelligence movement was made up of 37 brave volunteers that assisted the British and the local Jewish resistance & Zionist movements. She was captured, arrested and tortured in a prison in Budapest for not revealing secret radio codes. Hannah’s story and invincible spirit, along with her moving diary and poetry that she left behind, serve as an enduring inspiration to people everywhere standing up to the powers of hatred and oppression. In Israel she is considered a national heroine. She (only 23 years old) was executed on this day that I am posting this, November 7.
The famous poem, Eli, Eli was written by Hannah Senesh and put to music by David Zehavi https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCBCIFwOy-M

Note: after seeing this incredibly moving show on Broadway, we went to Dutch Fred's Bar and Restaurant to unwind with an old dear friend, who entertained us for 6 months in 2023. Thank you Laura Pachnos.Læs mere