Hannah Szenes (b. Budapest, Hungary 17 July 1921 – d. 7 November 1944, Budapest, Hungary) was a martyred victim of the Holocaust. She was a Jewish Hungarian poet and a member of a secret British World War II organization (SOE). She moved to Nahalal in the British Mandate of Palestine to study in the Girls’ Agricultural School. In 1943, she enlisted in the British Women’s Auxiliary Airforce to work with partisans disrupting Nazi activity and preventing deportations to concentration camps. Parachuting into Yugoslavia, Szenes learnt that Hungary was already Nazi-occupied. Nevertheless, she continued towards the border. She was arrested by Hungarian guards, who found her British military transmitter. She was imprisoned, brutally tortured and executed by a firing squad. She had refused to reveal any information. She is buried in Mount Herzi Military Cemetery in Israel. After her death, Szenes’s diary and poems were published and she became a national heroine in Israel.
The Hannah Szenes miniature statue in Budapest shows Szenes parachuting into Yugoslavia in 1944.
More on the Hannah Senesh Legacy Foundation website.
Address: Hana Senesh Park, Jósika u. 22, 1077, Budapest, Hungary