A walk through Mt. Herzl Cemetery is a time for one to reflect on the cost of our independence, not just to give tribute for the mighty leaders, but to acknowledge the average guys and gals who desired a normal life but were deprived of it for one reason or another in their generation.
In memory of a few of my favorite heroes and heroines:
HANNAH SENESH (Szenes)
1921 – 1944
Born in 1921 in Budapest, Hungary
1938 she joined Maccabea, the most established Zionist student organization in Hungary. She wrote in her diary: "I've become a Zionist. This word stands for a tremendous number of things. To me it means, in short, that I now consciously and strongly feel I am a Jew, and am proud of it. My primary aim is to go to Palestine."
Hannah departed for Palestine shortly after the outbreak of war in Europe. She was accepted at Nahalal, the Girl's Agricultural School. In her first letter to her mother, she wrote: "I am home…!"
1942 Hannah enlisted with the resistance in the Palmach, the commando wing of the Haganah, and joined the Women's Auxiliary Air Force.
1943 She enlisted in the British Army in order to return to Europe. She was a parachutist in the Jewish resistance under the British Armed Forces during World War II. She wrote in her diary: “I must go to Hungary, be there at this time … and bring my mother out."
1944 Hannah was a parachutist in a campaign to assist Jews in Nazi-occupied Hungary.
She took the code name "Hagar", began training in Egypt as a paratrooper who would be dropped behind enemy lines. To her comrades: "We are the only ones who can possibly help, we don't have the right to think of our own safety; we don't have the right to hesitate…It's better to die and free our conscience than to return with the knowledge that we didn't even try."
After training she flew to Italy; then parachuted into the former Yugoslavia where she successfully crossed the Hungarian border with the aid of a partisan group, only to be denounced the following day by an informer and taken to a Gestapo prison in Budapest.
Both the Gestapo and Hungarian officers brutally tortured Hannah. A 'trial' was held and she was eventually executed by a firing squad.
1950 Hannah Senesh was one of seven parachutists from a group of thirty-two who died. Her remains, along with her six fellow paratroopers who died, were brought to Israel. They are buried in the Israeli National Military Cemetery on Mt. Herzl.
Nearly every Israeli can recite from memory her famous poem, "Blessed is the Match":
Blessed is the match consumed in kindling flame.
Blessed is the flame that burns in the secret fastness of the heart.
Today, Hannah Senesh is considered an historical symbol of courage, an eternal flame that burned throughout the Holocaust.
No comments:
Post a Comment