The National Library of Israel has unveiled a set of rare photographs of Jewish paratrooper Hannah Senesh (Szenes) to mark the 80th anniversary of her execution.
In 1944, Senesh was deployed into Nazi-occupied Europe by the British in a last-ditch effort to rescue Hungarian Jews from death camps. After her capture, she was tortured and executed, but her story and her poetry transformed her into an iconic symbol within modern Jewish, Israeli, and Zionist culture.
In 2020, the National Library was gifted her archive and legacy by Ori and Mirit Eisen from Arizona in the US; since then, archivists have been going through the collection, which includes manuscripts, notebooks, photos, documents and personal items, digitising and making it publicly available.
Hannah Senesh on horseback at Kfar Baruch. From the Senesh Family Archive at the National Library of Israel, courtesy of Ori and Mirit Eisen.
Matan Barzilai, the Library’s head of archives and special collections notes that, in addition to being a paratrooper and gifted poet, Senesh was also a talented photographer..
In a letter she wrote to her mother while at the Nahalal Agricultural School for Girls in the Jezreel Valley, she joked: “Everyone wants me to photograph them, as if they’ve appointed me the court photographer.” And another time she wrote in her diary: “Now I will go arrange my photographs and reproductions. This activity gives me great pleasure.”
Hannah Senesh: Pic: Yad Vashem
Senesh wrote short descriptions on the back of some photographs; some were attached to letters sent to her family in Hungary, others preserved in neatly arranged albums with typewritten captions.
Born in Budapest in 1921, at a young age, Senesh received an Agfa Box-Spezial Camera, which she took everywhere she went. She photographed her home in Budapest, family vacations, and after her aliya (immigration), her life in pre-state Israel.
Hannah Senesh with cows at the Nahalal Agricultural School for Girls. From the Senesh Family Archive at the National Library of Israel, courtesy of Ori and Mirit Eisen.
With anti-Semitism increasingly apparent, she became an active Zionist and immigrated to Mandatory Palestine in 1939. After studying at the Nahalal agricultural school for two years, she joined Kibbutz Sdot Yam, where she worked while writing poetry and a play about life on the kibbutz.
In 1943, she enlisted in the British army and volunteered to join a paratrooper unit tasked with parachuting into occupied Europe. The mission’s goals were to help Allied pilots who had fallen behind enemy lines flee to safety, and to work with partisan forces to rescue Jewish communities under Nazi occupation.
Hannah Senesh with Leah + Rebecca Sieff at Nahalal. From the Senesh Family Archive at the National Library of Israel, courtesy of Ori and Mirit Eisen.
In March 1944, Senesh and three fellow paratroopers parachuted into Slovenia. On June 9, 1944, she was caught by the Hungarian police and imprisoned in Budapest. Despite months of interrogation and torture, and her mother being arrested as well, Hannah refused to cooperate with her captors.
Hannah Senesh playing table tennis. From the Senesh Family Archive at the National Library of Israel, courtesy of Ori and Mirit Eisen.
She was charged with spying and treason and sentenced to death. On November 7, 1944, at age 23, Hannah Senesh was executed.
Hannah Senesh on a visit to her cousin. From the Senesh Family Archive at the National Library of Israel, courtesy of Ori and Mirit Eisen.
In 1945, Jewish Brigade soldier Moshe Braslavsky returned to Israel and Kibbutz Sdot Yam where he discovered a suitcase under Senesh’s bed containing letters, diaries, photo albums, and more. Later on, her notebook of poetry, which she had entrusted to a friend before going on her last mission, also came to light.
In 1950, Senesh was reinterred in Israel’s national military cemetery on Mt. Herzl in Jerusalem.
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