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Hero * Martyr * Poet The inspiring story of a remarkable life cut short. "I don't think Hannah wanted to die for the sake of having her memory exalted in history or to prove herself equal to a romantic image she conceived for herself. Her purpose wasn't to die. She died for her life's purpose." --U.S. Senator John McCain, in Why Courage Matters Hannah Senesh, poet and Israel's national heroine, has come to be seen as a symbol of Jewish heroism. Safe in Palestine during World War II, she volunteered for a mission to help rescue fellow Jews in her native Hungary. She was captured by the Nazis, endured imprisonment and torture, and was finally executed at the age of twenty-three. Like Anne Frank, she kept a diary from the time she was thirteen. This new edition brings together not only the widely read and cherished diary, but many of Hannah's poems and letters, memoirs written by Hannah's mother, accounts by parachutists who accompanied Hannah on her fateful mission, and insightful material not previously published in English. Described by a fellow parachutist as a "spiritual girl guided almost by mysticism," Hannah's life has something of value to teach everyone. Now the subject of a feature-length documentary, Blessed Is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh, Hannah's words and actions will inspire people from each generation to follow their own inner voices, just as she followed hers.… (more)
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She was born in Budapest on July 17, 1921, to a wealthy, distinguished, and acculturated Hungarian Jewish family. Her father was a well-known writer. She received a good education in Hungarian schools, but suffered anti-Semitism there. She was a natural leader. Her first grade teacher told her mother that when she had to leave the class, she would tell Hannah to sit in her chair and Hannah would tell the children stories while they listened in silence. She had a strong feeling for Jews. She told her mother that even if she was not born a Jew she would still help them, “by all possible means, a people who were being treated so unjustly now, and who had been abused so miserably throughout history. She arrived in what was then called Palestine in 1939, a name given to Israel by the Romans who attempted to erase all memory of Jews and Israel, when Hitler was trying to do the same, but more inhumanly.
On June 9, 1944, just before she parachuted into Nazi-controlled territory, she gave her friend a piece of paper. She said, “If I don’t return, give this to our people. This friend writes: “It was ‘Blessed Is the Match,’ the poem every Israeli, young or old, can now recite from memory.”
Blessed is the match consumed
in kindling flame.
Blessed is the flame that burns
in the secret fastness of the heart.
Blessed is the heart with strength to stop
its beating for honor’s sake.
Blessed is the match consumed
in kindling flame.
In her final poem before her death, she wrote:
I gambled on what mattered most,
The dice were cast, I lost.
So she thought. But her body was brought to Israel in 1950 and reburied with honors in the “Parachutists section” of the military cemetery on Mt. Herzl in Jerusalem. She was “a modern-day Joan of Arc, the type of heroine who comes along once in a century – bold, brilliant, and uncommonly courageous.” She fought back.