Hannah Senesh: Her Life and Diary, the First Complete Edition »

Hannah Senesh, poet and Israel's national heroine, has come to be seen as a symbol of Jewish heroism. Safe in Palestine during World War II, she volunteered for a mission to help rescue fellow Jews in her native Hungary. She was captured by the Nazis, endured imprisonment and torture, and was finally executed at the age of twenty-three.

Like Anne Frank, she kept a diary from the time she was thirteen. This new edition brings together not only the widely read and cherished diary, but many of Hannah's poems and letters, memoirs written by Hannah's mother, accounts by parachutists who accompanied Hannah on her fateful mission, and insightful material not previously published in English. Described by a fellow parachutist as a "spiritual girl guided almost by mysticism," Hannah's life has something of value to teach everyone. Now the subject of a feature-length documentary, Blessed Is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh, Hannah's words and actions will inspire people from each generation to follow their own inner voices, just as she followed hers.

Publishers Weekly

On November 7, 1944, a Nazi firing squad in Budapest shot Hannah Senesh, 23, a Hungarian-born Zionist who had spent the previous five years studying and working in Palestine. Hoping to help liberate Jews in her homeland, she had joined the British army, parachuted into Yugoslavia and crossed the border into Hungary. Immediately captured, tortured and jailed, she refused to divulge sensitive information that could compromise her fellow partisans' safety. Since 1946, when her diaries were published in Hebrew, Senesh's story has been told many times, in biographies and film as well as through her own writings. This new edition is similar to a 1972 Schocken book by the same title (out of print). Both include poignant memoirs by Hannah's mother, Catherine, about her gifted daughter's childhood and tragic final months, as well as riveting essays by two of Hannah's fellow soldiers. Both also include Hannah's diary entries from ages 13 to 22 along with a selection of her poems and letters. This Jewish Lights edition adds more diary material, two poems, 12 letters and a handful of photos to those found in the 1972 edition, though curiously for a "complete edition" it has also deleted about 20 diary entries and three letters. For those unfamiliar with the story of Hannah's exceptional courage, this is a moving collection. (Dec.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.