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"Blessed is the Match" homepage

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HANNAH SENESH: “December 26th, 1943. Darling Georah, I'm starting something new. Perhaps it's madness, perhaps it's fantastic, perhaps it is dangerous. I wonder, will you understand? Will you believe that it is more than youthful romanticism that attracted me? There are times when one is commanded to do something, even at the price of one's life. “

MARCO WERMAN: Those words were written by Hannah Senesh. The reading is from a documentary called “Blessed is the Match,” which tells her story. Hannah Senesh was a Hungarian Jew who, in the late 1930s, moved to Israel – or British-controlled Palestine as it was called then. Later, in the midst of World War Two, she joined a small group of paratroopers trained by the British to infiltrate into Nazi-occupied Europe. Filmmaker Roberta Grossman says it was a complex plan.

ROBERTA GROSSMAN: The mission was two-fold. There was really a British part of the mission and a Jewish part of the mission. The British part of the mission – the reason that they trained these young kids from Palestine – was to try to make contact with and help rescue down allied pilots and bring them out through the Yugoslavian partisan basis so they could rejoin the war effort. And the Jewish part of the mission was that they hoped to make contact with Hungarian Jews. The Hungarian Jewish community was the last to be deported during the war. So they hoped to stir up some resistance among the part of, especially, young people in Hungary and also if possible, to create escape routes through the partisan-held areas of Yugoslavia.

WERMAN: The mission did not go well, as the documentary makes clear.

REUVEN DAFNI: Hannah Senesh and her group parachuted in on the 14th of March. Five days later, they learned that on the 19th of March, the Germans had occupied Hungary. Such a tiny window.
REUVEN DAFNI: The first time that I saw her cry. She cried, “We are late. We are late.”

WERMAN: That was Reuven Dafni, one of the surviving members of the paratrooper mission. Roberta Grossman, who directed the documentary, says the mission may have failed, but it was not in vain.

GROSSMAN: The mission didn't have the practical results that they hoped it would. A source of inspiration, I think, rather than a successful military mission that you can point to and say, “These many people were saved,” or “This town was taken,” or “This bridge was blown.”

WERMAN: A source of inspiration for whom?

GROSSMAN: I hope for everyone -- not in terms of the military aspect of the mission but in terms of the idea don't stand idly by. That when you see something wrong in the world -- and we certainly have our share of problems in the world; sadly genocide is still an issue – that we as individuals don't think, “I'm too small. I'm too little. I'm too young.” But that we ask, “What can I do to try to ameliorate some of the pain in the world?” And I think that's what is inspirational about Hannah, is that she certainly personifies somebody who did not stand idly by.

WERMAN: How do you think the forming of the small group of paratroopers, and the power of what they undertook on this mission, had as an influence on how the Israeli military evolved into what is today the IDF?

GROSSMAN: Well, you know, the British were very reluctant to create this mission and there were also repeated requests for a Jewish brigade to be formed under the auspices of the British, but the British, I don't think, were too keen on arming Jews who could then turn around as they did later and fight against the British forces. I think that Hannah symbolizes the ideal of resistance and fighting back – and that obviously is a very potent idea in Israel.
WERMAN: Hannah Senesh ended up imprisoned in Budapest, and there are parts of your documentary where I feel the title could be “In the Name of The Mother” because there's this incredible mother-daughter narrative in there.

GROSSMAN: Uh-huh. I don't think of this as a Holocaust film. I think of it as a mother-daughter love story, set against the backdrop of very difficult times. The film is told from the point of view of Catherine Senesh – Catherine Senesh's memoir that she wrote.

WERMAN: And she's the mother?

GROSSMAN: She's the mother. That forms the core of the narrative of the film. After Hannah was captured, she was brought to Budapest and she was tortured for her British radio code and for other information. Eventually, they found out that she was not this girl from Palestine, she was actually Hannah Senesh from Budapest and that her mother was still there. And they brought her mother to be interrogated and then brought the two women together. And they hadn't seen each other in five years. Catherine thought that Hannah happily was far, far away from the horrors of what was happening to the Jews of Hungary. So in that moment, they basically told Hannah, you know, “Tell us everything you know or we'll kill your mother.” They told Catherine, “Convince her to tell us everything she knows or we'll kill her.” And very quickly, without the opportunity to exchange more than a word or two, the two women decided to trust each other, to hold fast, and to not capitulate. So it's a pretty remarkable story.

WERMAN: The documentary is called “Blessed is the Match”. Filmmaker Roberta Grossman directed it. Thank you very much, Roberta.

GROSSMAN: Thank you.

WERMAN: You can see clips from Roberta Grossman's documentary at theworld.org

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