A suitcase containing her poems, songs, diaries, letters and other items was found in Kibbutz Sdot Yam, where she had been living before taking on the mission, about a year after her death.
By HANNAH BROWNHannah Senesh is seen with chickens on Moshav Nahalal.(photo credit: COURTESY OF THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF ISRAEL'S HANNAH SENESH ARCHIVAL COLLECTION)
At an emotional online press conference on Monday, representatives of the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem unveiled the full Hannah Senesh Archival Collection, which they had just received from Szenes’s family. Hannah Szenes (sometimes spelled Senesh) is celebrated in Israel, both for her beautiful poetry and her wartime heroism. Her Hebrew poems, such as “Eli, Eli” (also known as “A Walk to Caesarea”) and “Blessed is the Match,” have been set to music and have become anthems.Born in 1921 in Budapest, she came to Palestine in 1939 to study agriculture. In 1941, she joined the Hagana, the paramilitary group that preceded the IDF, and eventually volunteered for a mission in which she parachuted into Yugoslavia. The plan was that she and several other volunteers would cross the border into Hungary and bring supplies to anti-Nazi resistance groups, help downed Allied pilots and organize Jewish self-defense efforts.Szenes was captured at the Hungarian border and executed after she resisted torture and refused to divulge information about her comrades. She was 23.About a year after her death, a suitcase containing her poems, songs, diaries, letters and other items was found in Kibbutz Sdot Yam, where she had been living before embarking on the mission. Her mother, Katherine, came to Palestine with her daughter’s other writings and her estate was managed by her brother and his children. But now, the NLI has her entire literary archive, which it will display and make available to scholars.In the press conference, Hezi Amiur, curator of the Israel Collection at the NLI, displayed handwritten poems, photographs, diaries and even a card she made for her grandmother, as well as her Hungarian typewriter and the suitcase in which the bulk of the poems were found.The Hannah Senesh Archival Collection also includes a newspaper she edited at the age of six; photographs and personal documents from throughout her life, including report cards and her birth certificate; the minutes of her trial; correspondence and documents related to the Kasztner Affair in which Rezso Kasztner, a Hungarian journalist, controversially negotiated with the Nazis for the release of Jews during the war; family documents going back to the 19th century, including materials from her father, the writer Bela Szenes; and more. The collection includes the last poem she wrote and a farewell letter to her mother, found in her dress after her execution.“The complete archive will shine new light on Hannah Szenes... and her life, so rich and heroic,” Amiur said.The library representatives thanked Ori and Mirit Eisen from Arizona, who enabled the transfer of the complete archival collection to the NLI.In a statement, members of the Szenes family said: “The family is parting with a collection of great personal and sentimental value and believes that this move will ensure the continued preservation of the collection, as well as the promotion of Hannah Szenes’s universal and artistic legacy and values. The transfer of the collection to the National Library of Israel will also enable the broader public to access it, presenting many new opportunities for it to be used for research and educational purposes. After many years of searching, a new home for the family’s complete literary estate has finally been found. We feel that the collection has reached safe harbor, just as the renewed ‘Beit Hannah Szenes’ opens in Kibbutz Sdot Yam. We thank the National Library of Israel and the Eisen family for their efforts and assistance, and are happy and excited that the flame of the poet Hannah Szenes and her father, the writer Bela Szenes, will now be preserved in the most suitable place – the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem – and that from there its light will shine upon the world.”Oren Weinberg, the director of the NLI, said: “In 2021, we will commemorate 100 years since Hannah Szenes’s birth, and the National Library of Israel will work throughout the year to open global digital access to this significant archive, giving it pride of place among the millions of other cultural treasures we have digitized and made available online over the past decade.”David Blumberg, chairman of the NLI’s Board of Directors, said, “Hannah Szenes is a central figure in Israeli and Jewish culture and collective memory. The archive now at the National Library of Israel is one of tremendous national, literary and historical significance, and perhaps its greatest importance lie in its value for Zionist education. We will strive to use this priceless archive to continue preserving and promoting the legacy and memory of Hannah Szenes, especially among the younger generation.”The NLI is on track to move into its new home opposite the Knesset in 2022 and several speakers at the press conference said they hoped that it would open to the public soon after that.
