WWII poet-heroine Hannah Szenes commemorated by parachute jump

Some 100 IDF soldiers jumped from a plane over Slovenia on Tuesday in memory of Hungarian-born Hannah Szenes who parachuted into Europe before being captured and sentenced to death by the Germans. As a member of the pre-Israel state Haganah, she joined the Jewish contingent of the British army in 1943 and volunteered to join a group of parachutists for a mission in Nazi-occupied Europe. Hungarian, Slovenian, Croatian and British servicemen took part in the international jump to a spot near the site of her  landing. Hannah Szenes’s poems, like her short life history, are a familiar part of Israeli folklore. Her remains had been transferred from their first burial site in Slovenia to the National Cemetery on Mt. Herzl, Jerusalem.