Blessed Is the Match

The extraordinary story of Hannah Senesh (1921–1944) is not well known, so there is reason to be grateful for Roberta Grossman's wonderful documentary. The daughter of a prominent Jewish family in Budapest, Senesh fled her native country for British-mandated Palestine before the outbreak of World War II, and then in 1943 joined the British military and trained for an incredibly dangerous mission in which she would paratroop back into Nazi-controlled Europe and help coordinate efforts between the partisan movements and the Allied forces. The 22-year-old was captured at the Yugoslavian-Hungarian border, imprisoned, and tortured by the Gestapo-trained Hungarian Arrow Cross Party, but she did not reveal the details of her top-secret assignment to her captors. As a result of her defiance, she was executed by a firing squad before the official verdict of the Nazi-controlled court was announced (her body was returned to Israel for proper burial in 1950). The posthumous publication of Senesh's diaries and poetry revealed an intellectual sensitivity and literary insight that lent even greater depth to her heroic actions. Combining interviews with former classmates, kibbutz colleagues, and wartime cellmates, together with rarely seen newsreel footage, dramatic re-enactments, and concise recitation of her writing by narrator Joan Allen, Blessed Is the Match serves as an excellent tribute to an unsung hero of World War II. Highly recommended. Aud: C, P. (P. Hall)