National Library of Israel Unveils New Hannah Senesh Photographs

In 1944, the Jewish paratrooper Hannah Senesh (Szenes) was deployed into Nazi-occupied Europe by the British in a last-ditch effort to rescue Hungarian Jews from death camps. After her capture, she was tortured and ultimately executed, but her story and her poetry – in particular “A Walk to Caesarea” (commonly known as “Eli, Eli” / “O Lord, My God”) – transformed her into an iconic symbol within modern Jewish, Israeli, and Zionist culture.

In 2020, Ori and Mirit Eisen from Arizona, USA, graciously enabled the transfer of the complete Hannah Senesh Archival Collection to the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem. Since then, the Library has worked to catalogue, preserve and digitize the archive’s contents, which include manuscripts, notebooks, photos, documents, personal items, and more.

Upon the 80th anniversary of Senesh’s execution, the Library is privileged to release a set of several little-known photographs of Hannah Senesh, taken by her both in Hungary and pre-State Israel, that reveal her world as seen through the lens of her camera.

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Matan Barzilai, Head of Archives & Special Collections at the National Library of Israel, notes that, in addition to being a brave paratrooper and a gifted poet, Hannah Senesh was also a talented photographer, who documented events, large and small, and also enjoyed being photographed on her travels.

In a letter she wrote to her mother while at the Nahalal Agricultural School for Girls in the Jezreel Valley, she joked, “Everyone wants me to photograph them, as if they’ve appointed me the court photographer.” And another time she wrote in her diary, “Now I will go arrange my photographs and reproductions. This activity gives me great pleasure.” Hannah Senesh wrote short descriptions on the back of some photographs, some were attached to letters sent to her family in Hungary, others preserved in neatly arranged albums with typewritten captions.

Hannah Senesh was born in Budapest in 1921. At a young age, Senesh received an Agfa Box-Spezial Camera, which she took everywhere she went. She photographed her home in Budapest, family vacations, and after her aliya (immigration), her life in pre-state Israel.

With anti-Semitism increasingly apparent, she became an active Zionist and immigrated to Mandatory Palestine in 1939. After studying at the Nahalal agricultural school for two years, she joined Kibbutz Sdot Yam, where she worked while writing poetry and even a play about life on the kibbutz. In 1943, she enlisted in the British army and volunteered to join a paratrooper unit tasked with parachuting into occupied Europe. The mission’s goals were to help Allied pilots who had fallen behind enemy lines flee to safety, and to work with partisan forces to rescue Jewish communities under Nazi occupation.

In March 1944, Senesh and three fellow paratroopers parachuted into Slovenia. On June 9, 1944, she was caught by the Hungarian police and imprisoned in Budapest. Despite months of interrogation and torture, and her mother being arrested as well, Hannah refused to cooperate with her captors. She was charged with spying and treason and sentenced to death. On November 7, 1944, at age 23, Hannah Senesh was executed.

In 1945, Jewish Brigade soldier Moshe Braslavsky returned to Israel and Kibbutz Sdot Yam where he discovered a suitcase under Senesh’s bed containing letters, diaries, photo albums, and more. Later on, her notebook of poetry, which she had entrusted to a friend before going on her last mission, also came to light. The publication of Senesh’s story and poems made her an icon of modern Jewish, Israeli, and Zionist culture.