THE EXECUTION OF HANNAH SENESH AN SOE WAR HEROINE

Hannah Senesh – an SOE war hero.

23 year old Hannah Szenes (Angicised spelling Senesh) was born in Budapest, Hungary on the 17th of July 1921, into a middle-class and well-educated Jewish family. She was a good student and wanted to become a poet and writer.

In 1938, the Nazi persecution of Jews was underway and Hungary sided with Germany.  Rumours were rife that Germany would invade Palestine.  Hannah volunteered to serve in the Jewish underground army and wanted to help Jews escape from Europe.  She became a Zionist and moved to British Mandate Palestine in 1939.  Here she joined a Jewish commando group that was set up to assist British operations in Europe. 

In March 1944, Hannah was parachuted by the British Special Operation Executive into Yugoslavia near the Hungarian border with 36 other resistance fighters. Their mission was to save Jews and Allied airmen but before she had a chance to achieve anything, she was captured at the border by Hungarian police in possession of a British radio transmitter.

Hannah was imprisoned in Budapest. From the window she could see the street she grew up on. Placed in solitary confinement she was beaten and interrogated daily, but she never gave her captors the code for her transmitter.  

She was charged with treason and tried on the 28th of October 1944.  She defended herself and accused her captors of treason for betraying the Hungarian people.  Her sentencing was postponed till the 4th of November and then again, by which time the Red Army was advancing into Hungary.  She was never formally sentenced.

On the 7th of November Colonel Simon, a senior Hungarian officer came to her cell and asked her if she wanted to seek clemency.  She refused to do so.  So he then told her to write her last letters as she would be shot by firing squad at 10 a.m.  A plaque commemorating her was placed on the prison wall. 

Her remains were exhumed and sent to Israel in 1950 where they were reburied in the cemetery on Mount Herzl, Jerusalem.  In 1993 she was formally exonerated by the Hungarian government and is considered a hero in Israel. 

In one of her daily diary entries she had written: "In the month of July, I shall be twenty-three.  I played a number in a game.  The dice have rolled. I have lost." Her diary was published in Hebrew in 1946.

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