CRASH OF THE HEAVENS

Flights of freedom.

Hannah Senesh was a Jewish freedom fighter in the 1940s. Moving to British Mandate Palestine from Hungary in the late 1930s, she joined the Palmach, the elite military working to establish a Jewish political presence in the Holy Land. In 1943, she participated in a unique and dangerous mission. The British were considering sending “a unit of Jewish volunteers from Palestine behind enemy lines in Europe.” The goal? “To establish contact with the local underground leadership and resistance fighters and, together with them, help downed Allied airmen and escaped prisoners of war get back to Allied lines. After the completion of those British Intelligence assignments, the volunteers could…assist them in fomenting armed resistance against the Nazis and their fascist collaborators.” In breathless prose and cinematic detail, the book presents the men and women from all backgrounds joined in concert to save something of European Jewry. We hear the roar of airplane engines, feel the wind as they jump, and brace for impact as they land. We follow them through Eastern European woodlands and shadow them through city streets. But in the end, Hannah is captured and executed in Hungary. Was she a reckless martyr? The book ends with the judgment of the late John McCain: “I don’t think Hannah wanted to die for the sake of having her memory exalted in history or to prove herself equal to a romantic image she conceived for herself. Her purpose wasn’t to die. She died for her life’s purpose.” This is a book of inspiration for our time, when heroism and self-sacrifice have lost their luster.

A tale of heroic self-sacrifice during the Holocaust, told in camera-ready action and detail.