|
Sara Melnick Hannah Senesh (Szenes)If I could meet any Jewish person it would be Hannah Senesh. Hannah Senesh was a brave woman who gave up her dream and her life during World War II to help others achieve their dreams. I would like to meet someone who stood in the middle of the action of World War II, the Holocaust, and the birth of Israel because I enjoy learning about history by seeing and feeling and doing. I would ask her to show me the Israel of her time, the way she saw it in the middle of the 20th century. Hannah’s dream was to make alyiah, to live in Palestine (modern day Israel). After experiencing anti-semitism growing up in Budapest, she went to agricultural school in Palestine instead of university in Hungary so that she would have the skills to work on a Kibbutz. When she first arrived in Palestine in 1939, she wrote to her mother, "I am home … This is where my life's ambition - I might even say my vocation - binds me, because I would like to feel that by being here I am fulfilling a mission…" In Israel there was not the anti-semitism that made Hungary feel so foreign. In Palestine, she heard of an organization called Palmach (part of the pre-Israeli army) that took volunteers and sent them into Europe as paratroopers to rescue concentration camp victims and try to bring them back to Palestine. She soon joined up, but on her mission, she and six of the others with her were captured by the Nazis and tortured to death. Before her mission, she wrote the poem “Eili Eili” that was later turned into a famous song. She also wrote many other famous Hebrew poems focusing on the beauty of life. Like Hannah Senesh, I love Israel although I have never been there. I dream of living there for extended periods of time. I have heard stories and I am not scared to visit an Israel faced with threats of terror, although the situation is nowhere near as bad as in her time. I believe that it is necessary for Jews, especially youth, to visit and show that we are not afraid. Only then can we reach the peaceful Israel that Hannah Senesh dreamed of.
|
Copyright © 2002-2006 Student Publishing Program (SPP). Poetry and prose © 2002-2006 by individual authors. Reprinted with permission. Contents photo from LHS Yearbook Staff. SPP developed and designed by Strong Bat Productions.