1944: Hannah Szenes, who gambled on what mattered most
November 7th, 2008 Headsman
On this date in 1944, Hannah Szenes was shot by the Nazis in her native city of Budapest — a city she had left five years before, and to which she had returned as a British special operative.
Hannah Szenes (alternatively, “Chana Senesh”) grew up in interwar Hungary.
Reaching adulthood in a period of rising anti-semitism in the late 1930’s, she became a Zionist and emigrated to British-controlled Palestine.
But with the onset of war, she signed up with the British Special Operations Executive and was parachuted behind German lines in March 1944.
Her brief: to save both Jews and downed Allied pilots. It is often described as the only military expedition to relieve European Jewry during World War II.
And it was as dangerous as it sounds.
Hannah was nabbed crossing into Hungary on a mission that her colleagues (rightly, it seems) deemed too perilous to attempt, and withstood months of torture without divulging her codes.
By the time she went in the dock for treason, Nazi control of Hungary was collapsing and judicial administration itself was breaking down to the timpani of falling shells. Her sentencing November 4 was postponed; on November 7, an officer peremptorily informed her that she had been condemned to death. It’s believed that she was actually never formally sentenced, merely mopped up ahead of the unstoppable Red Army, which on this very day first entered Budapest’s suburbs.
A writer as well as a fighter, Szenes’ poetry survived as her monument to life — like the present-day Israeli standard “Blessed is the Match”, also the title of the documentary excerpted above; and, her “Halikha LeKesariya” (”A Walk to Caesarea”), also known as “Eli, Eli” (”My God, My God”). Here it is sung by Regina Spektor.
These lines were reportedly her last-known verses from prison:
One - two - three … eight feet long
Two strides across, the rest is dark …
Life is a fleeting question mark
One - two - three … maybe another week.
Or the next month may still find me here,
But death, I feel is very near.
I could have been 23 next July
I gambled on what mattered most, the dice were cast. I lost.
Also On This Date
Possibly Related Executions
- 1871: The Paris Commune falls
- 1944: Marc Bloch, French historian
- 1941: Masha Bruskina, Kiril Trus, and Volodia Shcherbatsevich, partisans
Entry Filed under: 20th Century, Artists, Capital Punishment, Death Penalty, Disfavored Minorities, England, Execution, Germany, Guerrillas, History, Hungary, Jews, Martyrs, No Formal Charge, Occupation and Colonialism, Popular Culture, Shot, Soldiers, Summary Executions, Torture, Treason, Wartime Executions, Women
Tags: 1940s, 1944, a walk to caesarea, blessed is the match, budapest, chana senesh, eli eli, halikha lekesariya, hannah szenes, my god my god, naziism, november 7, red army, regina spektor, siege of budapest, soe, special operations executive, world war ii, zionism
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1. Jewlicious » Haveil&hellip | November 10th, 2008 at 11:20 am
[...] Executed Today reminds us that Hannah Senesh was shot by the Nazis on Nov. 7th, 1944 in Budapest, Hungary. Senesh who escaped war torn Europe 5 years earlier for Palestine, returned as a special operative for the British when she was captured, imprisoned and executed by the Nazis. Zichronah Librachah. [...]
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