Roberta Grossman in person at the Castro.

Hannah Senesh was a Hungarian Jewish resistance fighter, an optimist in the face of dire circumstances and a poet. The child of educated parents in Budapest, Hannah’s early years were consumed by her love of literature. Her emotional growth as a teenager paralleled the growth of anti-Semitism in Hungary and led her to fiercely embrace Zionism. After emigrating to Palestine, Hannah volunteered for a special unit in the British Army and parachuted into occupied Yugoslavia. She then traveled clandestinely back to Hungary to make contact with the resistance, but was arrested, tortured and subsequently executed. Her group’s bold foray was the only outside rescue mission for Jews attempted during the Holocaust.

Roberta Grossman’s inspirational documentary Blessed is the Match, narrated by three-time Academy Award nominee Joan Allen, is a paean to Hannah Senesh’s courage and creativity. Gorgeous images of parachutes float gracefully in the air like Senesh’s words, written days before her capture by the Nazis: Blessed is the flame that burns in the secret fastness of the heart/Blessed is the heart with the strength to stop its beating for honor’s sake/ Blessed is the match consumed in kindling flame. Hannah Senesh comes to life in this film through unusually effective re-creations with actresses Meri Roth and Marcela Nohynkova, alongside interviews with kibbutz members, fellow parachutists, historian Sir Martin Gilbert and Hannah’s nephews. But perhaps what brings us closest to this brave young woman are the letters she wrote to her mother, Catherine, which capture a daughter’s hopes and dreams for herself and her people.

—Nancy K. Fishman

Presented with Every Day the Impossible: Jewish Women in the Partisans

Sponsored by the Laszlo Tauber Family Foundation

Co-presented by Holocaust Center of Northen California, Facing History & Ourselves and Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation