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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how

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Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Sarah Dowdy. And when meet Geese,

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Speaker 1: Who's the woman who hid Anne Frank's family for as

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Speaker 1: long as she could during World War Two? Died in

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Speaker 1: January this year. It got us thinking about the first

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Speaker 1: time we ever read and Frank's diaries and what it

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Speaker 1: meant to us. I had blogged about picking up every

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Speaker 1: Holocaust related young adult book I could find, Number the Stars,

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Speaker 1: the Devil's Arithmetic, Devil in Vienna, the Upstairs Room. But

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Speaker 1: there's another World War two young Jewish diarist I hadn't

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Speaker 1: heard of until our friend Jacob Silverman, a wonderful writer

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Speaker 1: you should look up, mentioned her to me. Her name

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Speaker 1: is Hannah Sanish, and some call her the Joane of

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Speaker 1: Arc of Israel, and when she was younger than we are,

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Speaker 1: she parachuted into Nazi occupied Europe to try to rescue

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Speaker 1: other Jews. She wrote in a poem a voice called

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Speaker 1: I went, and how we missed her in history class.

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Speaker 1: I have no idea, but we did. So here's her story.

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Speaker 1: We're gonna remedy that So Hannah Sunnish was born into

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Speaker 1: a middle class family in Budapest in July of nineteen one,

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Speaker 1: and she didn't grow up learning a lot about Judaism.

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Speaker 1: Budapest had a very large Jewish community, but it was

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Speaker 1: mostly assimilated, and her father wrote plays and newspaper columns,

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Speaker 1: so she grew up in this environment where writing was

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Speaker 1: considered a really good way to express yourself, and she

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Speaker 1: started writing poems at age six when her father died

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Speaker 1: about other happy kids and how lucky they were. Really

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Speaker 1: a deep thinker right from the start. She started keeping

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Speaker 1: a diary when she was thirteen, recording, you know, all

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Speaker 1: the little day to day stuff that a thirteen year

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Speaker 1: old girl thinks about. But her world was rocked again

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Speaker 1: around that time. She got her first taste of anti

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Speaker 1: Semitism when she went to a girls school where Jews

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Speaker 1: were charged three times the tuition as Christians. She was

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Speaker 1: also elected to a post in a literary society, but

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Speaker 1: then another election was held because she was Jewish. And

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Speaker 1: it's around this time too that Hungarian anti Semitic sentiment

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Speaker 1: was growing and restrictive laws were put into place. Jews

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Speaker 1: were kicked out of their professions and her brother leaves

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Speaker 1: for France because he's not allowed to go to college.

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Speaker 1: So this family is starting to rebel in smaller ways already,

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Speaker 1: and the Arrow Cross Party emerged in nineteen thirty nine,

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Speaker 1: a fascist party that quickly became popular. Will come back

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Speaker 1: to them later in the episode. But in nineteen thirty eight,

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Speaker 1: in this environment that's growing increasingly hostile to Jews are assimilated,

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Speaker 1: Hanna found Zionism, which, to simplify greatly, is the desire

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Speaker 1: for a Jewish state located in the Jewish homeland of Israel.

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Speaker 1: And just uh, for your information, the state of Israel

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Speaker 1: wasn't established until so in Hannah's time, today's Israel was

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Speaker 1: under British rule as part of Palace Tine, so not

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Speaker 1: to confuse you with the terminology later in the podcast. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And she's this person who's really looking for something to

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Speaker 1: believe in and to give her life meaning. And in

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Speaker 1: her experience, anti Semitism had been everywhere in Europe and

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Speaker 1: there was no way to get away from it except

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Speaker 1: to go to a place that was just for the

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Speaker 1: Jewish people. So she started studying Hebrew for the first

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Speaker 1: time and trying to rally her classmates to emigrate to

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Speaker 1: Palestine with her. She applied to agricultural school of all things,

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Speaker 1: so from academic to farm worker and to recap our

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Speaker 1: girl's story so far, she found a cause and a

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Speaker 1: new interest in religion. She wanted to leave her home

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Speaker 1: and everything she knew, and she was ready to put

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Speaker 1: down her books and pick up a shovel. But she's

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Speaker 1: got a lot of bureaucratic obstacles to actually get all

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Speaker 1: the way to Palestine. And she eventually does get there.

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Speaker 1: She sends her mother lots of letters, some of them

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Speaker 1: are written with these little illustrations chronicling her daily life.

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Speaker 1: So still keeping these very detailed entries of everything that's

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Speaker 1: happening to her. She also writes more poetry, so we

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Speaker 1: have a pretty good idea of your not so average

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Speaker 1: persons personal feelings and trouble, and also just the climate

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Speaker 1: of the time, what was going on. Then Hannah left

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Speaker 1: the farm for a kibbutz, and while she liked it,

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Speaker 1: she was lonely. She was extremely idealistic, according to others

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Speaker 1: who were there, even for idealists, and she was also

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Speaker 1: worried that she'd never see her mother and brother again,

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Speaker 1: and that perhaps she'd been selfish in her desire to leave,

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Speaker 1: starting to have second thoughts about this huge step she

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Speaker 1: had made in her life, especially as the war heated

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Speaker 1: up and she didn't hear from her brother anymore, and

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Speaker 1: from Hungary side, her mother starts getting shorter and shorter letters,

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Speaker 1: and then they stopped completely. So this split family. All

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Speaker 1: three of them are in completely separate places, and none

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Speaker 1: of them are in communication. None of them knows what's

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Speaker 1: going on with the others. And this is somewhat surprising

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Speaker 1: for the time, because Hungarian Jews had seemed relative, he

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Speaker 1: say from the atrocities, going on to give a little

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Speaker 1: bit of background. Their prime minister from nineteen thirty nine

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Speaker 1: to nineteen forty one, Paul to Lucky, whose name I

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Speaker 1: may have completely mangled, had allowed anti Jewish laws to

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Speaker 1: be enacted, but he'd also jailed many members of the

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Speaker 1: Arrow Cross party and worked very hard to try to

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Speaker 1: keep Hungry autonomous during this time, and when the Germans

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Speaker 1: marched into Hungary on their way to invading Yugoslavia in

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Speaker 1: April nineteen forty one, he killed himself and his successor,

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Speaker 1: los Lo Bardosi followed a policy of appeasement, at which

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Speaker 1: point Hungary joined the Germans in their war and Jews

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Speaker 1: started being deported. But his successor, miklosh Kali in March

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Speaker 1: nineteen forty two, went more in the opposite direction. He

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Speaker 1: walked the line between appeasement and opposition and he refused

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Speaker 1: to deport the Jews. He stopped that practice during his time.

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Speaker 1: So well, we have this back and forth going on

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Speaker 1: in Hungary. Back in Palestine, stories are starting to trickle

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Speaker 1: in with the Polish people about the horrors happening in

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Speaker 1: not the occupied Europe and the ghettos and the killings,

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Speaker 1: and the Jews in Palestine are obviously determined to help.

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Speaker 1: They've got to do something. Hannah tried to get her

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Speaker 1: mother out of Hungary, but the immigration certificate never came,

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Speaker 1: so she decided that she had to go back to

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Speaker 1: organize a resistance movement in her country and rescue her mother,

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Speaker 1: and to put these events in the context of a timeline.

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Speaker 1: According to the documentary film Blessed is the Match, which

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Speaker 1: you should definitely watch, in January, nine of the Jews

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Speaker 1: who would die in the Holocaust were still alive, and

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Speaker 1: in fifteen months those statistics were totally reversed, were dead

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Speaker 1: and only alive. So this all happened very quickly. So

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Speaker 1: in response to the final solution, which is starting to

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Speaker 1: go into effect here, wanting to do something to help,

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Speaker 1: Hannah joins the Haganah, which is a Jewish military force.

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Speaker 1: But then she finds another opportunity. The Brits were looking

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Speaker 1: for volunteers to go to the Balkans and contact partisan

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Speaker 1: resistance fighters to aid in Allied efforts, and Hannah and

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Speaker 1: the other Palestinians wanted to get in the same area,

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Speaker 1: but with the aim of rescuing their Jewish brethren in trouble.

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Speaker 1: So these two desires coincided a bit, and she and

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Speaker 1: the other thirty odd volunteers who were willing to risk

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Speaker 1: their lives began training in parachuting so they could get

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Speaker 1: behind enemy lines. And Hannah would also be in charge

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Speaker 1: of radio communications for her group. And the last photo

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Speaker 1: of her ever taken was the day before her mission

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Speaker 1: to you the Slavia began and her brother had just

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Speaker 1: arrived in Palestine and it was the first time they'd

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Speaker 1: seen each other in years, and unfortunately it would also

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Speaker 1: be the last, because she and her fellow parachutists landed

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Speaker 1: on March fourteenth, ninety four, and by the nineteenth the

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Speaker 1: German troops entered Hungary. So terrible timing, Hannah cries, I mean,

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Speaker 1: just imagine, she's justus arrived. There's not enough time to

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Speaker 1: go to all the Jews and try to build up

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Speaker 1: some sort of resistance. And almost immediately the Germans set

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Speaker 1: up a new very sympathetic to them government and encouraged

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Speaker 1: the Arrow Crossers are fascist from earlier who immediately began

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Speaker 1: robbing and killing Jews, and even more laws were set

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Speaker 1: in place in addition to those barring Jews from professions

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Speaker 1: and owning property. They had to wear the yellow stars.

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Speaker 1: There were deportations, arrests, murders, people were put in ghettos,

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Speaker 1: their restrictions on leaving the house, and it's important to

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Speaker 1: know that things were fast tracked really in Hungary. The

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Speaker 1: Germans showed signs of weakness and Allied hope for their

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Speaker 1: defeat was growing. So the Germans, the Arrow Crossers and

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Speaker 1: their other collaborators had to do their damage quickly. You

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Speaker 1: have the Allies breathing down their back, right, So more

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Speaker 1: than four thousand Hungarian Jews were sent to concentration camps

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Speaker 1: in just two months. But none of this that had happened. Yet,

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Speaker 1: when Hannah decided to actually cross the border into Hungary,

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Speaker 1: and anyone who was paying attention knew that it would happen,

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Speaker 1: though it was it was clear that it was coming,

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Speaker 1: and so it was a very brave thing for her

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Speaker 1: to do. A lot of her parachute as companions that

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Speaker 1: it was too dangerous, and she knew that when she

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Speaker 1: left there was a great risk of being killed. But

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Speaker 1: she goes anyways, and she's only twenty two years old,

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Speaker 1: and she gave what's probably her most famous poem, Blessed

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Speaker 1: is the match, to one of the men before she left,

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Speaker 1: and it goes, Blessed is the match consumed in kindling flame.

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Speaker 1: Blessed is the flame that burns in the secret fastness

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Speaker 1: of the heart. Blessed is the heart with strength to

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Speaker 1: stop its beating for honor's sake. Blessed is the match

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Speaker 1: consumed in kindling flame. And according to the documentary, she

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Speaker 1: handed this piece of paper to her fellow parachutists and

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Speaker 1: he just sort of threw it in the bushes and

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Speaker 1: went on his way. But he realized that he had

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Speaker 1: to go back. He just had a feeling and went

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Speaker 1: back and searched through all of these bushes to he

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Speaker 1: found that little piece of paper and found her poem. So, unsurprisingly,

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Speaker 1: Hannah is caught. She knew she probably would be when

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Speaker 1: she signed on for this mission, and the Gestapo wanted

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Speaker 1: her transmitter codes, but she wouldn't give them up, and

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Speaker 1: she didn't want to give up the other people in

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Speaker 1: her mission, and so she's brutally beaten and tortured. All

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Speaker 1: of her teeth are knocked out, and even when she's

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Speaker 1: being interrogated every day, she would not break and give

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Speaker 1: up the codes. They took her to Budapest, and once

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Speaker 1: they found out who she was, brought her mother in,

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Speaker 1: thinking they could use her against Hannah, and her mother

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Speaker 1: of course didn't know anything. She had thought Hannah was

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Speaker 1: still in Palestine. Surprise. That must have been for a

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Speaker 1: terrible but she wouldn't, of course press her for information either,

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Speaker 1: so they both ended up in jail. And well, it

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Speaker 1: must have been incredibly difficult to see each other and

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Speaker 1: those kinds of circumstances, it must also have been a

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Speaker 1: comfort because they could see each other through their windows

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Speaker 1: sometimes or in the prison yard. Hanna made really good

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Speaker 1: use of those windows too, She used them to signal

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Speaker 1: information about the outside world to the other inmates. Of course,

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Speaker 1: she's being kept in very close quarters, but she's exposed

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Speaker 1: to a lot of really important, really secret information, and

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Speaker 1: she's able to pass that on to other people, right

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Speaker 1: because she's still being interrogated every day, so she has

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Speaker 1: the opportunity for at least someone to whisper something to

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Speaker 1: her or perhaps overhear other things that the guards are saying.

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Speaker 1: So she tries to give her fellow inmates hope. And

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Speaker 1: she drew a star of David on her dirty window

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Speaker 1: at some point because she didn't have to wear the

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Speaker 1: yellow stars like the others did, but she wanted to

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Speaker 1: let them know that she was still part of them.

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Speaker 1: And she also tried to entertain her cell mates, teaching

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Speaker 1: them Hebrew, telling them about Palestine, writing little pieces and

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Speaker 1: having them put them on, and even lied to a

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Speaker 1: woman in the prison yard saying that her teeth had

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Speaker 1: always been knocked out. They weren't knocked out by someone

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Speaker 1: who was interrogating her, so perhaps she wouldn't be as scared. Meanwhile,

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Speaker 1: things in Hungary are getting worse than the region of Hungary.

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Speaker 1: Who was working on a separate piece was overthrown and

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Speaker 1: the arrow crossers took over and they roped Jews together

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Speaker 1: and put them in the Danube, shooting every other one

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Speaker 1: and letting the others sink up. So still continuing on

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Speaker 1: this rapid fire extermination, and eventually Hannah's mother Catherine was released,

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Speaker 1: but Hannah would stay in prison to be tried for treason.

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Speaker 1: So in August nineteen forty four, the pro Nazi government

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Speaker 1: in Hungary started showing cracks. In July, there had been

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Speaker 1: another attempt on Hitler's life as part of Operation Valkyrie,

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Speaker 1: and it had become clear that Germany was close to

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Speaker 1: losing the war, and as a further ray of hope

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Speaker 1: for Hannah, the Soviets had entered Hungary in September, and

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Speaker 1: she was still in jail, but it seemed like she

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Speaker 1: might get out. She still has a trial to go through, though,

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Speaker 1: and her trial is a closed military tribunal in October

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Speaker 1: nineteen and she wouldn't plead for her life, but interestingly

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Speaker 1: they do not sentence her, and the judges flee the country,

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Speaker 1: so it's seeming like perfect timing. Finally, for once, it

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Speaker 1: seems like she might actually get out. She's still keeping

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Speaker 1: her diary, which is part of the reason that she's

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Speaker 1: so famous. We have this very clear record of everything

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Speaker 1: she's been doing, day by day. And she wrote that

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Speaker 1: she wasn't sure if she believed in a god, but

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Speaker 1: she believed that the world was created for good despite everything.

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Speaker 1: And that also reminded me of the famous and frank

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Speaker 1: quote about still believing that people are good at heart.

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Speaker 1: And she wrote another poem she's well known for during

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Speaker 1: this time, saying that she would have been twenty three,

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Speaker 1: but I gambled on what mattered. Most the dice were cast,

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Speaker 1: I lost. And despite the fact that her judges had fled,

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Speaker 1: there was one man who had it in for her,

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Speaker 1: and he made sure she was executed on November seven,

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Speaker 1: ninety four, and it said that she refused a blindfold you.

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Speaker 1: A week after she was killed, her mom was sent

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Speaker 1: on a death march to Austria. This is another amazing story.

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Speaker 1: She manages to escape and finally reach his Palestine, and

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Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty Hannah's body was returned to Israel and

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Speaker 1: she's buried there along with seven of the other parachutists

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Speaker 1: who had volunteered with the British Army. And as for Hungary,

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Speaker 1: the Soviets drove the last of the Germans and the

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Speaker 1: arrow Crossers out in February nineteen and in nineteen forty

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Speaker 1: one there had been seven hundred and twenty five thousand

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Speaker 1: Jews in Hungary. By the end of the war, only

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Speaker 1: two hundred sixty thousand were left. Tens of thousands more

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Speaker 1: left after the war, but today Budapest has the largest

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Speaker 1: Jewish population in Eastern Europe, according to the Jewish Virtual Library.

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Speaker 1: Part of the reason why Hannah Senish is perhaps more

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Speaker 1: famous than the other parachutists in her group or even

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Speaker 1: that mission, is because of all those records she kept,

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Speaker 1: because of the journal she kept until the day she died,

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Speaker 1: and her poems and her other writings, and despite the

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Speaker 1: fact that we hadn't known who she was, she is

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Speaker 1: a huge figure in Jewish history and in times when

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Speaker 1: anti Semitic sentiment is far from gone. You know, last

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Speaker 1: year there was that shooting at the Holocaust Museum in Washington,

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Speaker 1: d c. And also last year the Budapest memorial to

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Speaker 1: the thousands of Jews killed in the Danube was vandalized.

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Speaker 1: The steel shoes symbolizing the victims were filled with pigs feet.

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Speaker 1: In the face of those sentiments, it's encouraging to remember

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Speaker 1: the bravery of people like Hannasenish and like knee Peace.

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Speaker 1: So on that somber note, we're going to go to

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Speaker 1: happier things like listener mail. So since Hannah was a

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Speaker 1: Hungarian poet, we thought it would be appropriate to mention

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Speaker 1: a very interesting real mail that we got from Troy

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Speaker 1: in Atlanta. He sent us a tri corn hat made

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Speaker 1: of paper and suggested that we cover the topic of

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Speaker 1: the twentieth century modernist poet Marianne Moore. And we tried

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Speaker 1: to wear this hat, but our heads are too big

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Speaker 1: for it, we think because of all of our brains

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Speaker 1: full of brain. And it also reminded us of this

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Speaker 1: guy who lived somewhere in the dorms at u g

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Speaker 1: A who wore a tricorn hat every day, and the Troy,

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Speaker 1: if it's you, let us know. I had completely forgotten

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Speaker 1: about him until now, but it's pretty memorable. He also

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Speaker 1: sent us some patterns for tricorn hat, so we might

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Speaker 1: try to make our own later. If you'd like to

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Speaker 1: send us some email, you can get us at History

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Speaker 1: Podcast at how stuff Works dot com. We've also got

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Speaker 1: a Twitter feed at missed in History and a Facebook

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Speaker 1: fan page at history Class Stuff, and we have an

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Speaker 1: article that might interest you if you're into World War

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Speaker 1: two stuff, are their Nazi war criminals still at large?

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Speaker 1: Which you can find on our homepage at www dot

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Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. For more on this and

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Speaker 1: thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com

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Speaker 1: and be sure to check out the stuff you missed

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Speaker 1: in History Class blog on the how stuff works dot

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