Jewish Humanists Remembered: Hannah Szenes (1921-1944)
(Mar
/ Apr 2006)
In this series we are featuring profiles of leading secular and humanistic Jews from various countries and eras. These profiles are written by Bennett Muraskin, a regular contributor to Outlook, Humanistic Judaism and Jewish Currents. Many of these profiles appear in Bennett's book Let Justice Well Up Like Water: Progressive Jews from Hillel to Helen Suzman, published by the Congress of Secular Jewish Organizations (CSJ0) and the Centre for Cultural Judaism. (For ordering information contact CSJO at csjo@csjo.org.)
"There are stars whose radiance is visible on earth though they long have been extinct. There are people whose brilliance continues to light the world though they are no longer among the living. These lights are particularly brilliant when the night is dark. They light the way of humankind."
In her brief life, Hannah Szenes traveled a road from a comfortable middle- class existence and being a budding poet in Hungary, to becoming a kibbutznik in Palestine and finally a British soldier captured behind enemy lines in Nazi-occupied Europe. A real Jewish heroine, Hannah Szenes (pronounced Senesh) embodied The Blessed Match of her poem "that was burned and ignited flames."
Jews prospered in Hungary before World War I, when it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Despite some setbacks, they continued to play an important economic and cultural role in independent Hungary, established in 1918.
Szenes was born into a prosperous assimilated family. Her father was a famous journalist, novelist and playwright. Educated in a Protestant high school, she also received Jewish religious instruction. Under the influence of her tutor, the chief rabbi of Buda, she learned Hebrew and became a Zionist. She wrote that her embrace of Zionism made her proud to be a Jew.
In the late 1930s, the Hungarian government, a military dictatorship, instituted anti-Semitic measures. Szenes was affected when her high school removed her as president of its literary society and her brother was denied admission to university. After she joined a Zionist student organization in 1938, she made aliyah (emigrated to Palestine) in September 1939, the same month that World War Two began.
In Palestine, Szenes enrolled in an agricultural school and later joined a kibbutz. Her letters to her brother in France and her mother in Hungary reveal that she found her education to be deficient and the physical labour on the kibbutz at times overwhelming.
In 1941 she joined the Haganah, the main Zionist militia. During World War Two, it directed its members to enlist in the British Army and proposed to the British a mission to the Balkans. Szenes volunteered in 1943 and was trained as a paratrooper, along with 31 other Haganah fighters. Their objective was to free British POWS held by the Germans, rescue downed British airmen and organize Jewish resistance. Szenes' special assignment was to conduct secret radio transmissions.
She was parachuted into Yugoslavia in March 1944 and her band linked up with Tito's communist partisans. The partisan commander urged them to keep their Jewish identities a secret, in case some of his men were influenced by Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda that depicted the British as servants of an international Jewish conspiracy. The Haganah volunteers decided to pose as British soldiers from Wales. Although they spoke Hebrew among themselves, they told their hosts they were actually speaking Welsh.
In June, after marching 200 miles through hostile territory, Szenes crossed into Hungary against the advice of her comrades, who considered it too dangerous. She was immediately captured by pro-Nazi Hungarian police and taken to a Budapest prison. Charged with "treason" and spying for the British, she was tortured, but refused to give details of her mission. Her captors even arrested her mother and brought them together, hoping that this would convince Szenes to confess. Her mother supported her decision to maintain her silence and was released. Szenes continued to write poetry in her prison cell.
A Zionist rescue committee made attempts to free Szenes and appeared to be on the verge of success, but this opportunity vanished when the Nazis took compete control of Hungary in October 1944 to prevent the Hungarian government from surrendering to the Allies. Szenes was executed on November 6, 1944, along with six of her comrades, two months before the Red Army liberated Hungary from the Nazis. Only in 1993 did a post-communist Hungarian military court officially reverse the verdict posthumously.
Szenes' remains were brought to Israel in 1950 and buried in Jerusalem on Mt. Herzl. A portion of her diary, letters and poems were first published in Hebrew in 1946. A more complete edition appeared in 1991, but some letters have yet to be published in Hebrew. After seven years of failed discussions between the Szenes' two nephews and Israeli museums, her family has decided to transfer the entire Hannah Szenes archive, including documents, personal possessions and photographs she took in Palestine, to the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC.
Szenes' poetry has been translated into many languages. In addition to The Blessed Match, she is also known for Eli, Eli which expresses humanistic ideals, albeit couched in religious language.
My God, my God, I pray that these things never end
The sand and the sea, the rush of the waters;
The crash of the heavens,
The human prayer.
The strength of my dreams,
The dreams of a people.
The promise of freedom,
The hope of my heart.
Eli, Eli was set to music and the song has become popular among Jews in Israel and elsewhere. The Israeli version of the movie Schindler's List ends with it.
Szenes remains an inspirational figure for progressive Zionists, women
and anti-fascists. An expanded version of her diaries, Hannah Senesh:
Her Life and Diary, was reissued in English in 2004 to commemorate the
60th anniversary of her death. There are also two biographies: Ordinary
Heroes: The Life and Death of Chana Szenes by Peter Hay (1989) and Hannah
Szenes: A Song of Light (2000).