Deborah Sharavi

"torresD" <torresD30@hotmail.com> wrote:
>Photo Story of Rachel Corrie's Murder
>http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article1248.shtml
>So why does Israel pursue such a heartless
>policy that seems tailor-made to generating
>hatred against it?

How many times has torresDiane re-re-re-posted his
garbage from the Elec.Intifada Palliebull site?

>HONOR RACHEL, END HOUSE DEMOLITIONS

HONOR CHANA SZENES, END THIS CRAP ABOUT CORRIE





Corrie was 23 when she was killed last March. Szenes
was 23 when she was killed in 1944.

How do they compare?

Chana Szenes was the daughter of well-to-do and highly-
assimilated Jewish family of BudaPest. As a teenager,
she was neither a Zionist, nor religous, nor was her
Jewishness very important. Her diary was filled with
accounts of parties, dances, holidays, tennis, books
she was reading, poems she had written or would write,
and boys who had declared undying love. When she was
sixteen, she elected to her school's Literary Society.
Later, she was dismissed because she was Jewish. She
wrote furiously:

"Had I not been elected I would not have said a word,
but this was a decided insult. Now I don't want to take
part in or have anything to do with the work of this
society, and don't care about it any more."

When her older brother left Hungary in 1938 to study in
France, Chana was upset, not so much for herself as for
their mother, who was "crushed, but sure this is the
best ... as far as anyone can tell these days." It was
her first acknowledgment of the approaching war.

Nevertheless, she continued to fill her diary accounts
of her social life and poems. Then, 27th October 1938:
"I now consciously and strongly feel that I am a Jew and
proud of it. My primary aim is to go to Palestine and
work for it." Shortly after she turned 18, Chana
received her certificate of immigration.

Enrolling in an agricultural school at Nahalal in the
Jezre'el, she found she loved the land, enjoyed the
work, but missed her mother. She read the poems of
Rachel; composed lyrical descriptions of the Galilee,
the Jordan, Lake Kinneret; dated; recorded in her
diary marriage proposals she had received, and
generally forgot the war -- but not for long. Then,
after the fall of France, May 1940: "How can I have
the patience to study and prepare for an exam while
the greatest war in history is raging in Europe?"
Shortly thereafter, she joined Kibbutz Sdot Yam, a
village near ruined Caesarea, established by the
Haganah for purposes of aiding illegal Jewish
immigration from Europe.

My God, my God
I pray these never end:
The sand and the sea,
Rush of the waters,
Crash of the heavens,
Prayer of the heart.
- Chana Szenes

"Sometimes," she wrote, "I feel I am an emissary who
has been entrusted with a mission."

As the Battle of Britain got underway, British bases
throughout the Mediterranean were bombed, including
Haifa and Tel Aviv. In North Africa, the 8th Army
was driven back on Alexandria. In Iraq, a military
coup brought a pro-Nazi regime to power. Pearl Harbor
was bombed, and British bases attacked, breaking
the backbone of British and American naval power in
the Pacific. Immediately after, Berlin and Tokyo were
deluged with congratulatory cables from the Arab states.
The Egyptian foreign minister was intercepted en route
to Berlin with strategic data on British troops movement.
Palestine Arabs were arrested for distributing Nazi
literature, provided by the Palestinian Arab leadership,
then comfortably ensconced in Berlin.

Early in 1942, the third phase of the Final Solution
was put into effect. By October, the information,
disbelieved at first as "horror propaganda", was
confirmed. The National Council declared a stoppage
to all work for three days of mourning. On 8th December
1942, Ben-Gurion cabled a request a letter to Supreme
Court Justice Felix Frankfurter:

"Hitler's decision to destroy Polish Jewry is
apparently the first step in the genocide of the
Jews in all occupied countries, and we will undoubtedly
receive confirmation of unthinkable acts of atrocity
against women and children...A warning by the President
to the leaders of the German army, that they will
be held personally responsible for atrocities,
will probably influence them. There may also be
a possibility of saving children and perhaps women
as well by exchanging them for German national
women and children residing in the Allied countries...
Special actions should be taken to rescue the Jews
in the Balkans, Hungary, and western Europe, where
the Nazis do not rule directly, or where the Nazi
regime does not yet act with the same brutality
it displays in eastern Europe. A warning to the
governments of Hungary, Rumania and Bulgaria from
America is likely to influence them....It is
certainly possible to save at least the women
and children from these countries."

"I've had a shattering week," Chana wrote in January
1943. "I was suddenly struck by the idea of going
to Hungary." She was aware that her idea was an
"absurdity". But, "I must be there in these days
in order to help organize youth emigration, and
to get my mother out." Several weeks later, Chana
met Enzo Sereni.

Just then, Sereni was organizing a group of young
volunteers from the Palmach to parachute into Nazi-
occupied Europe. The plan, as originally envisioned,
was that several hundred specially-trained Palestinians,
with specific connections to the target countries,
would serve as intelligence agents, organize fighting
units of young Jews, and smuggle other Jews to safety.
The plan dovetailed with Allied needs; having suffered
heavy casualties in Eastern Europe; the Allies required
additional intelligence to minimize losses, as well
as to coordinate with the partisan movements; hence
the British Special Operations Executive formation
and training of the Palmach. The British insisted
that the primary objective must be to aid downed
Allied pilots, second, to organize local resistance.
Only after accomplishing this could the young
Palestinians attempt rescue of the local Jewry –
if any survived. From the projected hundreds of
volunteers, the British whittled the plan to 29
young men and three women – including Chana.

The Jewish Agency established a briefing center in
Haifa, where new arrivals from Europe were interviewed,
and a picture built of the current situation. Chana
and the others were formally inducted into the British
army and trained by the Palmach; it was their final
cooperative venture with Special Operations. Enzo
Sereni, who had recruited Chana and the others,
volunteered to parachute behind Nazi lines and
trained with them.

At the time, Sereni was over forty, the father of
four, and had no hope of surviving capture; moreover,
he was needed in Palestine. A pacifist and a religious
Zionist from a prominent Italian Jewish family, he
had edited an anti-Fascist newspaper, and broadcast
to Italy for Allied radio; utilizing his family's
contacts, stationed himself in Baghdad where he
worked with the Arab Unit of the Palmach to smuggle
young Iraqi Jews under the eyes of the British, whose
White Paper, issued on the eve of WWII to appease
the Arabs, had severely curtailed Jewish immigration.

Reuven Dafne, one of the surviving parachutists, wrote
about the mission, recalling Chana's arguments with
Enzo Sereni. An agnostic, she argued forcefully against
the existence of God, while the older and more
experienced Sereni refused to be ruffled. Reuven
remarked that Chana would be difficult. "She certainly
won't be easy to work with," Sereni observed.

When told that they were to depart for Cairo, Chana
"sang the whole way back to the village where we were
quartered, and made us sing along with her." Before
leaving, they went to take their leave of the Yishuv
leadership. Golda, upset over Sereni's decision, spent
a quarter of an hour pleading with him. "You're
really much too old and much too valuable here," she
said. "Please be reasonable for everyone's sake, and
stay."

But Sereni, haunted by the suffering of Italian Jews,
was determined to go. "Golda, you must understand,"
he said. "I can't stay behind when I sent so many
others. Don't worry."

En route to Egypt, Chana cheered the group, joked with
the British soldiers, never allowed her comrades to
give way to despair. When they returned, she said,
they would fly over Palestine in a big bomber and
each parachute out over his or her settlement. "I
pray for only one thing," Chana wrote her comrades
at Sdot Yam, "that the period of waiting will not
be too long and that I can see action soon. As for
the rest - I am afraid of nothing."

In March 1944, the parachutists were dropped into
Romania, Yugoslavia, Slovakia, Italy, Bulgaria, and
Hungary. Chana Szenes, Reuven Dafne and Yoel Pagli
spent three months in Yugoslavia transmitting information
to the British. In a surprise encounter between a partisan
unit and German soldiers, they were forced to flee.

In the three months they had spent in Yugoslavia, Hungary
had been occupied by the Germans. Heretofore some eight
percent of Hungary's million Jews had been deported or
detained in work camps. Adolf Eichmann, however, was
dissatisfied with the way Hungary was "solving its
Jewish problem", and an extremist pro-Nazi government
was installed. In May 1944, the transport of Hungarian
Jews to the death camps was stepped up to 12,000 per day.

The news agitated Chana; anxious for her mother, she
became impatient to cross over into her native Hungary.
By this time, they realized they would receive little
assistance from the partisans in entering Hungary, but
Chana was determined. "We're the only ones who can help,"
she urged her comrades. "We don't have the right to think
of our own safety; we don't have the right to hesitate."

En route, they encountered a Frenchman and two Jews trying
to get to Palestine. Moved by the meeting, she wrote the
poem Blessed is the Match. Before parting from her comrades
to enter Hungary, she gave it to Reuven Dafne. He never saw
her again.

In June 1944, Chana and her three companions crossed
the frontier. Yoel Pagli entered Hungary separately.
They were stopped by Hungarian police at a village
inside the frontier, and betrayed by the villagers to
the Nazis. One of Chana's companions shot himself.
Their radio, hidden by Chana, was discovered. The
Nazis had long been interested in cracking the British
code, never so much as then, with the most massive
military operation in history underway on the beaches
of Normandy. Chana was beaten, several teeth knocked
out, and the soles of her feet whipped until they bled,
but she refused to disclose the code. She was sent on
to Budapest for further interrogation.

Catherine Szenes was arrested, told only that she was
"needed as a witness", and taken to military headquarters.
There she was informed that her daughter was in the
next room. But when Chana was brought in, her face
was so ravaged, her eyes blackened, welts on her
cheeks and neck, the mother barely recognized her.
"Mother, forgive me," Chana said, and wept in her
mother's arms. After reassuring Chana that her
brother was now safe in Israel, the mother asked
the question which had haunted her. Was it for her
sake that Chana had risked returning to Hungary?

"No," the daughter lied.

The mother was released, re-arrested and imprisoned.
Yoeli Pagli, also captured, learned of Chana from
other prisoners: how she argued fearlessly with the
German guards; how the warden himself came to her
cell to argue with her; how she warned them repeatedly
of the punishment they would receive after their
defeat by the Allies, then pushing out from their
Normandy beachheads while the Russians closed in
from the east.

The Nazi puppet regime of Hungary was ousted; a new
government immediately began preparations for surrender.
Chana was transferred to another prison, the interrogation
continued, but less brutally. Her mother, released
from an internment camp, visited the new prison,
where Chana lectured her cellmates about the Resistance,
Israel, kibbutzim, Zionism, Judaism. Not a few of the
prisoners were young children. When Chana found many
were illiterate, she resolved to teach them to read.
She asked her mother for books, specifically for a
Hebrew Bible.

Blessed is the match consumed in kindling fire.
Blessed is the fire that burns in the secret fastness of the heart.
Blessed is the heart with strength to stop its beating for honor's
sake.
Blessed is the match consumed in kindling fire.
- Chana Szenesz


In October 1944, Chana was brought to trial for treason.
The lawyer retained by her mother, while expressing
admiration for Chana, advised that there was no doubt
she would be found guilty. The sentence, however, would
be no more than five years' imprisonment. The trial
lasted a week, and she was indeed found guilty of
treason. When judgment was postponed for eight days,
the defence was hopeful that sentence would never be
passed. But there had been a countercoup; a new pro-
Nazi regime seized power, the Nazis returned Budapest,
deportation of Hungarian Jews to the death camps
resumed. By the war's end, a half million Hungarian
Jews had been slaughtered.

The Szenes lawyer admitted that under the new regime,
Chana might receive a much longer sentence than five
years. But it would run only until Hungary surrendered;
with the Allies closing in from the east and the west,
that day could not be far off. He was wrong.

On 7th November 1944, Chana Szenes was sentenced to
death. Her demand for the right to appeal was denied.
She could, however, she was told, request clemency.

"From you?" Chana retorted. "Do you think I'm going
to plead with hangmen and murderers? I shall never
ask you for clemency."

When led before the firing squad, Chana refused a
blindfold.

She had been allowed to write letters, which were
never delivered. To prove how "rebellious" she had
been and remained to her death, the prosecutor showed
the Senesz attorney part of one letter to her comrades:
"Continue on the way, don't be deterred. Continue the
struggle to the end, until the day of liberty comes,
the day of victory for our people." Although she had
indeed been guilty of treason, the prosecutor told
Catherine Senesz, "I must pay tribute to your daughter's
exceptional courage and strength of character, which
she manifested until the very last moment. She was truly
proud of being a Jew."

When the mother went to pick up her daughter's personal
effects at the prison, the letters Chana had written
were gone, possibly with the prosecutor, who fled
Hungary before the Allied advance. In the pocket of
one of Chana's two dresses, the mother found a
scrap of paper:

"Dearest Mother: I don't know what to say--a million
thanks and forgive me if you can. You know so well
why words aren't necessary. With love for ever,
Your daughter."

The mission of the thirty-two parachutists achieved
only limited success. Chaviva Reik and two others
formed an underground unit, and established a transit
camp for Russian prisoners of war and Allied airmen,
before they were captured and killed. Others managed
to transmit intelligence from behind Nazi lines, even
rescue downed Allied pilots, while others were killed
along with those they tried to rescue.

Enzo Sereni's fate remained unknown until his wife Ada
returned to Italy shortly before the war's end. By using
her contacts amongst high-ranking Italians, she learned
that her husband had been among the first captured by
the Nazis; transported from camp to camp, he had been
murdered at Dachau.

Signora Sereni stayed on in Italy, working with the
illegal immigration organization; in time, she became
head of Mossad operations in Italy. It was during her
tenure that the immigrant ship the Yetziat Eiropah
Tashaz - the Exodus 1947 - made its journey. So did
the lesser known Chana Szenes. Unlike the Exodus,
the latter delivered her passengers safely to Israel's
shores.

But reaching the city of ruins
Soft a few words we intone.
We return. We are here.
Soft answers the silence of stone.
We awaited you two thousand years.
-Chana Szenes, 1921-1944

Deborah