The heroism of Hannah Senesz: An exercise in creating collective national memory in the state of Israel

Hannah Senesz, executed in Budapest aged twenty-three, occupies a place of honour in the Israeli pantheon. A symbol of courage, fortitude and pioneering spirit, she refused to request a pardon from the Hungarian authorities and became a prime example of'purist'Israeli heroism, bridging the gap between the Holocaust and the rebirth of a sovereign Jewish nation. Yet Senesz was only one of seven parachutists from Eretz Yisrael who lost their lives in a clandestine British mission into occupied Europe during the second world war