Hannah Senesh: dream and reality
Book review by Dr Anne Sarzin
If you thought you knew the real story of Hannah Senesh, think again. Canadian author Douglas Century’s immensely readable biography presents a vibrant and touching portrait of an almost mythological figure in the history of Zionism and the Shoah. To many who knew her in her lifetime and admired her brilliance, compassion and courage, she remained an enigmatic and, indeed, a somewhat lonely figure, who kept an emotional distance from others. Thanks to Century’s in-depth portrayal of her complex character, readers are privy to the forces that shaped her temperament, her idealism, her commitment to securing the safety and liberation of others, and her phenomenal bravery and mental strength when subjected to unspeakable torture by Nazi interrogators.
Despite the universal reverence now accorded to Hannah’s memory in Israel, where schoolchildren recite her poetry from an early age, Hannah was no Joan of Arc embarking on a divinely inspired mission. She was a flesh-and-blood young woman who yearned for a soul mate. She was someone who felt the impact of Jew-hatred in Budapest and who seized the opportunity to undertake a dangerous mission to liberate Jews from Nazi tyranny and death, a mission that ended disastrously for Hannah. The book’s title and sub-title focus attention on the overall purpose and historic significance of her all-too-brief life, Crash of the Heavens: The remarkable story of Hannah Senesh and the only military mission to rescue Europe’s Jews during World War ll,
On 17 July 1921, Anna Szenes was born into an assimilated Jewish family in Budapest. She enjoyed a childhood of material comfort, thanks to her successful father, the playwright and author Béla Szenes, who was celebrated throughout Hungary. In 1927, her father died, aged 33, a loss that affected her deeply. She drew even closer to her mother, Katherine, and her older brother Gyura. A brilliant student and competent sportswoman—she played tennis and enjoyed skating and swimming—from an early age she wrote poetry, short stories and articles, ‘documenting her inner transformation and spiritual awakening as a Jew in the increasingly anti-Semitic Kingdom of Hungary’. By the mid-1930s, antisemitism exploded in Budapest. The homegrown Hungarian fascist militia, the Arrow Cross Party, adopted ‘racial’ antisemitism that categorised Jews as Untermenschen and parasites of the Hungarian nation. As the author points out, ‘Watching Hitler’s influence spread across western Europe had brought a new perspective to the fifteen-year-old’s sense of faith and identity and had significantly impacted her understanding of her place in the world’. The family’s circumstances deteriorated rapidly.
In April 1939, aged 17, Anna wrote and read publicly a maturely reasoned essay on ‘The Fundamentals of Zionism’. Quoting Nahum Sokolow, ‘Zionism is the movement of the Jewish people for its revival’, she added her own words, ‘We want to create a homeland for the Jewish spirit and the Jewish people. The solution seems so very clear: we need a Jewish state’. She applied, in Hebrew, to study at the Canadian Hadassah Agricultural School for Girls established on Moshav Nahalal in the Emek Valley. In July 1939, she was one of the lucky few to receive an immigration visa. Her mother had never envisaged farm work for her intellectually gifted daughter, who had graduated summa cum laude from the most prestigious girls’ school in Budapest. Anna stated, ‘There are already far too many intellectuals in Palestine. The great need is for workers who can build up the country. Who can do the work if not us—the youth?’
In September 1941, after completing the Nahalal course with flying colours, Hannah joined kibbutz Sdot Yam, within walking distance of the Caesarea Maritima ruins, which would spark one of her most memorable poems, ‘Eli, Eli’. She transformed rapidly into a ‘chalutza’, a member of the left-wing Zionist youth movements, who tilled the soil, drained the swamps and established pioneering agricultural kibbutzim. Hannah experienced the first terror bombings of the war in Mandatory Palestine, when Mussolini’s Regia Aeronautica attacked the Port of Haifa and the heart of Tel Aviv.
From this point onwards, the narrative focuses on ‘a crime without a name’ at that stage; and the unparalleled brutality of Hitler’s annihilation of European Jewry made David Ben Gurion weep. The Haganah formulated secret plans for a rescue operation, using their Palmach fighters—young volunteers trained as guerrillas—to infiltrate Nazi-occupied Europe and to conduct covert missions behind enemy lines. They hoped the British would respond positively, as the projected operation combined two main objectives; firstly, to find and assist thousands of Allied pilots and aircrew lost behind enemy lines, and to evacuate them so that they could resume flying combat missions. Secondly, to rescue Jews, in the only military operation of the Second World War designed for the salvation of Jewish communities in Europe. As the author so pertinently asks, ‘But who would be willing to jump back into the inferno?’
Eventually, M19, the British Directorate of Military Intelligence Section 9, cooperated with Yishuv volunteers to achieve these two major objectives. The success of this military connection between M19 and the volunteers was due, to a great extent, to the friendly disposition of Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Simonds. He wanted skilled agents with the requisite language skills to infiltrate occupied Europe, and to pose convincingly as Greeks, Romanians, Bulgarians or Hungarians. As the author notes, ‘Simonds came to champion the Jewish cause from a position of humanistic empathy’. This is a fascinating exposé of the blatant antisemitism that Simonds, a non-Jew, encountered among his fellow British officers, such as the pejorative comments expressed by Colonial Office secretary Lord Moyne. Simonds fought countless battles on behalf of his Palmach-trained volunteers, including Hannah Senesh. Simonds and his South African-born commanding officer Dudley Clarke bypassed the Foreign Office and the British Military commands in Cairo and Palestine, by sending a direct cable to Churchill that within 24 hours secured approval for the mission.
Hannah’s response was unequivocal, ‘There is absolutely no question but that I must go,’ she wrote. ‘The hardships and hazards entailed are quite clear to me. I feel I’ll be able to fulfill the assignment. I see everything that has happened to me so far as preparation and training for the mission ahead.’ Confirmation of Hannah’s acceptance as a volunteer in the British military came at the end of December 1943. Known now as Minnie, her rank was Aircraftwoman Second Class, and her dog tag serial number 2992382. Her Hungarian compatriots were Peretz Goldstein, Yoel Palgi and Yonah Rosen, but they were joined by further contingents originally from Romania, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Italy, Bulgaria and Greece, and Austria. Three women soldiers were chosen for these missions: Hannah, Haviva Reik and Surika Braverman.
The pace of the narrative is frenetic, with a series of life-threatening and unimaginably tense situations that challenge Hannah’s physical and mental resources. These are dark realms of cruelty, torture and inhumanity, through which Hannah’s light shines so bravely. She suffered under satanic sadists, but retained her sense of purpose and commitment to her ideals that never wavered. There is much one might question, including her innate sense of agency and her unfailingly proud brand of autonomy. Did these traits and her fiery independence adversely affect potential outcomes? And that final question that still hangs so tormentingly in the air, should she have begged for clemency from her judges? Could such a petition have averted their final decree that she be shot within the hour? Hannah loved life, family, poetry and beauty and, above all, the nascent Jewish state. She had every reason to cling to life despite the desperate circumstances.
While Hannah is at the heart of this biography, it is peopled with memorable characters. None more so than Enzo Sereni, a professor of philosophy and true humanitarian, whose tragic demise in horrific circumstances left the world a poorer place, with many mourning his passing. The accomplishments of Shaike Dan were legion. A member of the Romanian contingent, he worked miracles in conditions that would have confounded most human beings, extracting pilots from camps and shepherding them to safety; while also securing the fragile lives of hundreds of debilitated Jewish children and dispatching them successfully to new lives in Palestine.
This is a story that touches the heart and makes one truly aware of the depths to which some sink and the heights to which others rise. In regard to the latter, it is comforting to recall Hannah’s undying faith in her poem ‘There are stars’: ‘There are people whose brilliance continues to light/ the world even though they are no longer among the living’. The light Hannah discerned and described that shone so brightly through those dark times still shines for us today, thanks to Douglas Century’s skillful rendition of history and its cavalcade of memorable characters.
Crash of the Heavens: The remarkable story of Hannah Senesh and the only military mission to rescue Europe’s Jews during World War 11
Douglas Century
Scribe, Melbourne, Victoria
2025
