Hannah Szenes: poet, paratrooper, photographer remembered 80 years after death

Thursday marks 80 years since heroic Hungarian-Jewish poet and paratrooper Hannah Szenes was executed by Hungarian forces.

Szenes (sometimes spelled Senesh) was born in 1921 in Budapest and immigrated to Mandatory Palestine in 1939.  She became a member of Kibbutz Sdot Yam in 1941 and later joined the Haganah.

She then enlisted in the British Women's Auxiliary Air Force in 1943. After she was recruited for the Special Operations Executive, she volunteered for a mission in which she parachuted into Yugoslavia to attempt to cross into Hungary and assist anti-Nazi resistance groups, allied forces, and Jews in Hungary.

Szenes was captured at the Hungarian border and was executed after she resisted torture for six months. She was 23

Szenes's poems, notably “Eli, Eli” (also known as “A Walk to Caesarea”)  and "Blessed is the Match,” have become iconic Jewish anthems.  

Hannah Szenes the photographer

While she is best known for her poetry, Szenes was also fond of photography and said in diary entries that it gave her "great pleasure."

She took her camera on vacations across Europe and family vacations and brought it to make aliyah. Szenes was allegedly inseparable from it at the Kibbutz and wrote about it frequently in letters to loved ones and diaries. 

"Today I had an impressive success with photography," she wrote. "A few girls excited about the Nahalal photos bought the film and asked me to photograph them. All eight photos turned out very well. Now everyone wants me to photograph them as if they’ve appointed me the court photographer." 

Senesz's photography and postcard archive was deposited in the National Library of Israel as part of the Senesh Family Archive in 2022. The archive features photos that Senesh took herself and her personal camera.