Tikvah
Editors’ Pick

April 21, 2026

Hannah Szenes’s Sacrifice for Zionism

Substantiating a legend.

Yom ha-Zikaron was first established in 1951 to mourn Israel’s war dead, but Jews had been fighting and dying to protect the return to Zion for many years before that. In a recent book, Matti Friedman tells the story of young Zionists who, in September 1944, parachuted into Nazi-occupied territory in a mission to save some of their kinsmen. Allan Arkush writes in his review:

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