The Jewish woman who parachuted into Nazi-occupied Europe

Century thinks it important to tell the story of what Palestine’s Jews did to help those in Europe. “There’s been this mythology that Ben Gurion and the Jewish Agency turned a blind eye and didn’t try to help the Jews in Europe. Well, the British did everything they could to not let them be an armed force [and go and help].”

Yet Simonds realised what was blindingly obvious to Palmach figures such as Yitzhak Sadeh; here was a crop of trained fighters, native speakers of eastern European languages who, as recent émigrés, knew the territory they’d be landing in. “Simonds says to his boss, it’s costing us £5,000 and 14 months to train one pilot, one navigator. If these Jews can rescue one, it’ll make the whole mission worth it,” explains Century. “And they did bring back hundreds of pilots.”

For the Jews involved, most of whom, including Senesh, had close family trapped in Nazi Europe, their view was “we’ll go for your mission, but ours will be to rescue, warn, foment rebellion and save Jews”. They saw themselves as shlichim, meaning messengers, driven to show those trapped in Europe they had not been forgotten. “Hannah says at one point, ‘I have to go. Even if I’m captured, the Jews will know someone came,’” says Century.

Hannah says at one point, I have to go. Even if I am captured, the Jews will know someone came

Senesh’s late father had been a renowned writer and playwright. “It was almost like her name was Spielberg,” explains Century. She grew up largely secular, excelling academically, and became a committed Zionist when it became clear she would be locked out of the paths open to other Hungarians. Her personality was to go all in, and by 1939 she was at agricultural college in Nahalal before becoming a pioneer on Caesarea’s Kibbutz Sdot Yam. There she wrote countless poems, among them Blessed is the Match, now part of Reform liturgy.

Yet she wanted more and found it in the paratrooper mission. In March 1944 she was among a group who landed in Yugoslavia, spending months fighting alongside Tito’s partisans. The paratroopers had been rigorously trained by the British in Cairo, taught to send coded messages and equipped with what Century calls “James Bond-level gadgetry”.

In June they crossed the border with Hungary, but the Nazi occupation had begun. They were spotted on arrival, captured and tortured.

Death did not come quickly. Senesh was imprisoned alongside a host of women, among them, ultimately, her mother Katherine. Her name made her a prize prisoner and eventually, she was executed by firing squad in November 1944 when she was just 23.

Senesh was defiant to the end. Century suggests this cost her her life, as well as enshrining. her legacy as Israel’s Joan of Arc. “She said to the court who sentenced her to death: you are the traitors and there will be retribution. The way she handled herself was so brave, but also so insolent.” In truth, her path was inevitable once she was captured. Although presenting as a British fighter, the Palmach was then unique in having women in combat roles. For Century, it speaks to the feminism of the Zionist movement; equally it underscores the immense courage of Senesh and the two other women with whom she entered Europe, Haviva Reik and Surika Braverman.

Among the many fascinating episodes in Century’s book is that of Matilda Glattstein, a Slovakian Jew arrested while trying to escape the Nazis and imprisoned alongside Senesh. Pregnant, on Hannah’s advice she feigned illness to be admitted to the infirmary, from where escape was possible. Ultimately she was reunited with her husband, eventually making it to Israel. Their son, born covered in bruises as a result of the beatings his mother endured, was Baruch Glattstein, today renowned for pioneering work in forensics. “He’s the boy who is only alive because of Hannah Senesh,” says Century.

In death, Senesh became a symbol for a fledgling nation hungry for stories of heroism. “Hannah became a consecrated figure precisely because Jewish bereavement is incomprehensible when measured in six million,” says Century. “It comes much more within the scope of comprehension when it is boiled down to one single life, especially when that life has the innocence of youth and the fragile grace of femininity.”

Yet she was not alone, and Century, who has previously written on subjects as varied as Jewish fighter Barney Ross, Ice T, and the New York mafia, explores other missions in the book, some successful and others ending in tragedy. There’s Reik, who organised resistance fighters in Slovakia but was ultimately murdered, and Shaike Dan, a giant of a figure whose Romania mission was enormously successful. Then there’s Enzo Sereni, an Italian intellectual who, as Century says, “could have been Israel’s prime minister” had he not gone behind enemy lines and ended up in Dachau.

Almost all warrant a book in their own right, but in the 1980s, Israel’s revisionist historians began questioning their contribution. Century is apoplectic at this, citing the success of Dan and Yitzhak Ben‑Efraim, who saved perhaps thousands of pilots and rescued many Romanian Jewish orphans. “The Soviet army would have taken them as young as 13 into the Red Army. They got thousands of orphans on to ships and got them out.”

If Senesh and the other names remain known today, it is mainly as street names in Israel. Why has their memory faded? By 1947, there was a book chronicling the mission, there were stamps; the repatriation of Senesh’s remains occasioned a huge state funeral. “Before the state, they were already foundational heroes, but then there was War of Independence and then 1967 and 1973. Such is the pace of trauma in Israel. For many Israelis the mission of the Yishuv paratroopers is as remote as the War of the Roses. There have been many martyrs in Israel and now, most recently, we have those of October 7.”

Century submitted the book proposal in early 2023, spending that summer in Israel researching. Now that it has been published, he notes that the book helps reclaim the word Zionism at time when common usage has shifted the word’s meaning out of recognition. The book’s themes – the importance of a Jewish state, the way antisemitism seeped across Hungary – are also highly topical, “but you have to be a deep enough thinker about history to see how”, he says.

It might seem odd to describe a book about a woman who was executed by firing squad as uplifting, but Century’s does just this. “The Jews always survive. The rays of hope within the story made me realise that’s the story of our people.”

He wrote the book partly for his daughter, who is Senesh’s age, to show Jews during the Holocaust in a different light. “A reviewer wrote that my book is a corrective. For too long stories of the Holocaust, especially about women, have been victimology. We cannot only have Anne Frank’s attic. We must also know about Hannah Senesh’s parachute.”

During the course of writing her story, Century rather fell in love with Senesh. “She was so many things and as well as being mesmerisingly brilliant that included being difficult. Reuven Dafni, one of the 37 paratroopers, once said I don’t want to spoil the image of our Joan of Arc, but I didn’t like her. I admired her but I didn’t like her.”

Towards the end of the interview, Century mentions that Senesh’s father, who died when she six, had been offered a job in Hollywood, after Fox adapted one of his books. “Hannah’s nephew said to me that had he lived long enough, he probably would have gone to California and made a good living as a screenwriter. I replied that had that happened his aunt would probably have just been a typical American.” And there would be no Hannah Senesh, paratrooper, Zionist, poet and martyr.

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Crash of the Heavens, by Douglas Century, is published by Scribe