Page 10 - TORCH Magazine - Issue #20

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In 2021, Israeli paratroopers honoured what would have been the 100th birthday of Hannah Szenes, a Jewish woman who gave
her life attempting to save Jews during World War II and whose poetry continues to inspire Israelis today.
Hannah Szenes was born in Hungary in 1921. At the age of eighteen, she decided to emigrate to what was then the British Mandate for Palestine to study in the Girls' Agricultural School at Nahalal. Two years later she joined the
Haganah, the paramilitary group that laid the foundation of the Israel Defense Forces.
Hannah was a Zionist, whose feelings for Israel were captured in one of her poems.
“There is one place in the
world to which you do not escape, nor do you immigrate, you come home – the land of Israel”