Page Eight

THE JEWISH NEWS

-Friday,•December 20, VW

The Story of Chanah Szenes - - - Palestine Jewish Underground Heroi

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HUNGARIAN BORN CHANAH SZENES
FLED HER BIRTHPLACE IN 1939
AND CAME TO PALESTINE. AN ARDENT
ZIONIST SINCE CHILDHOOD, SHE ENTHUS-
IASTICALLY TOOK UP THE PIONEER LIFE
M THU AGRICULTURAL SETTLEMENT OF
s com - YAM , NEAR CAESARIA.

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AVER

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HAVE SO MANY HUMANS

PROVED THAT THEY COULD DIE
GLORIOUSLY AS IN THE RECENT
GREAT WAR AGAINST FASCISM.
THE NUMBER OF HEROES DEFIED

COUNT. AND YET-OCCASIDNALLY

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A HERO RISES WHOSE FEATS ARt
SO OU STANDING

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IS THAT OF

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GESTAPO. BECAUSE SHE CARRIED A RADIO
SET THEY WERE CONVOKED SHE HAD
MEMORIZED A CODE. THEY TORTURED
HER TO MAKE HER REVEAL THE SECRET.
Bin CHANAH WOULD NOT BREAK!
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DIANN.; AND THE

GROUP OF ITIE TRAINED
FOR SEVERAL WEEKS WITH TITO'S PARTISANS.
THEN THEY STOLE ACROSS THE HUNGARIAN
BORDER TO CARRY OUT THEIR PERILOUS
ASSIGNMENT.

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111101011 WIMPY, BUT UNDAUNTED,CHANAN
MS STILL AN INSPIRING SPUTUM AS
SHE FACED HER TORMENTORS WHEW
DROU6NT TO TRIAL. ACCUSED AS A
TRAITOR.SHE Me DEFIANTLY!! CAME
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HERE TO RESCUE MY PEOPLE!'

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MIEN WAR BROKE OUT,CNANAN VOLUNTEERED
AND ,JOINED THE PATS (PALESTINE
ARMY).3141 ASKED TO BE RELEASED,HOW-
EVER, BECAUSE THE BRITISH REFUSED TO LET

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SHE ASKED TO JOIN A DANGEROUS
MISSION TO RESCUE JEWS AND
ESTABLISH CONTACT WITH PARTI-
SANS DEEP BEHIND THE NMI
LINES IN HUNGARY. THE BRITISH
PARACHUTED HER INTO YUGOSLAVIA.
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NOVEMBER 7,1944 SNE WAS TAKEN Oa TO THE
PRISON COURT-YARD TO BE SHOT. WITH EYES
WIDE OPEN AND UNAFRAID, SNE FILL DEAD AS THE

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THE DIABOLICAL GESTAPO CONFRONTED
HER WIN KR OWN MOTHER_AND
TORTURED HER BEFORE CHAIMH'S EYES.
MN THEN SHE REFUSED TO YIELD. SHE
WOULD NOT BETRAY HER COMRADES!

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MIER THE DEAN SENTENCE HAD
SEEN PASSED ON HER,SNE WAS
ASKED IF WNW APPEAL FOR
MIRKY. CRANAH RUUD SCORNFULLY:

"I ASK NO MERCY FROM HANGMEN!"

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T the momentous national mobilization con-
ference of the United Jewish Appeal held
early this month in Atlantic City, Lt. Reuven
Dafni of the British army, a member of the Jewish
Brigade, paid tribute to a great war heroine, Chana
Szenes.
Reuven and Chana were members of the same
parachute crew that baled out in Hungary where

Amos the Herdsman:

Absorbing Novel Views
Prophet's Inner Struggle

THE HERDSMAN by Dorothy Clarke Wilson.
Westminster Press, Philadelphia, 1946, 373 pages, $3.

A Review by LOUIS PANUSH

Very few are the novels in the English lan-
guage about the prophets in Israel, their life,
their times and their teachings. "The Herdsman"
deals with Amos of Tekoa who lived in the days
of Perobam II, king of the Northern Tribes.
Amos, the son of a poor farmer. Elkanah, ex-
hibited as a child a very inquisitive mind and
sensitive soul. In the evening hours of story-
telling. Amos heard his father tell of his people's
past and Yahveh's greatness. Yahveh is his
treasure, as he was his father's and his father's
fathers.
But Amos wants to know the ways of Yahveh
and why the world that he made and ruled was
full of hungry, suffering people like his father
and other poor farmers while the rich revelled
in extravagance and waste. He cannot accept his
father's dictum that such life is the will of
Yahveh and who is to question his judgment.
In his own family there is a conflict between
his father, a stern believer in the God of his
fathers and in the purity of family life, and his
own daughter, Rizpah, who wants to be a Maiden
of the Temple, dedicated to the immoral, lewd
practices of Astarte.
Through his childhood and youth, and as a
shepherd in the hills of Tekoa he gets to learn
and understand certain truths which are as Jew-
ish as they are universal.
The final portion of Dorothy Wilson's book
depict Amos as the prophet who denounces
idolatry and wantonness. who pleads the cause
of the poor and justice for all. We hear his crying
out against animal sacrifices, thank offerings and
tithes when the needy are neglected and justice
is changed to bitterness. His words ring as true-
. and cut as sharply as a blade—today as they did
over 2.700 years ago:
Lister, to this!

You tvho crush the needy tPatria. Struina. Cyprus LP.)
And take ', read from the mouths of the poor ...
You who sell the very ref,,, of your grain
To people who are hungry.
Who account a handful of silver
for an empire! L.P
More important than a human being!"
'I am keeMng my eye, on your sinful kingdom,
will destroy it from the face of the earth!"

The book of Amos in the Bible tells very little
about the prophet. "These are the words of Amos
who was among the herdsmen of Tekcia, and who
prophesied on Israel in the days of Uzziah 'king
of Judah' and in the days of Perobam the son of
Yoash, king of Israel, two years before the earth-
(wake " From these few sentences and from facts
that were gleaned from the substance of his
speeches, Miss Wilson has woven a fictional story
okthe stern prophet of Israel. The author exhibits
a vivid imagination, leading at times to historical
inexactitudes and misplaced relationships; but
the style, descriptions, semi-poetical passages and
development of the growing personality of Amos

and his understanding of Yahveh are interesting

and absorbing.

they joined the partisans and sent messages to
Allied forces regarding Nazi positions in the war.
Lt. Dafni escaped to tell the tale of heroism by
the Palestinian Jews in the last war.
But Chana was captured. Her mother, who
now resides in Palestine, was brought to her and
the Nazis threatened to take the aged woman's
life unless Chana exposed the secret radio code

PM Articles

she and her companions were using. Chana c • -
torture and eventual death in preference to turn.
ing informer and being responsible for the live
of many fighters for freedom.
The above cartoon, by Norman Nobel, 'repro-
duced in The Jewish News through the courtesy
of the New Palestine, tells the story of= Chang
Szenes' martyrdom.

Consolidated

Stone's First hand Reports
Reveal Immigration Tragedy

I. F. Stone's account of the hope that sustains them: Pales-
underground Jewish migration tine.
movement to Palestine, first pub-
The epic story of "Underground
lished in a series of articles in to Palestine" begins in May, 1946,

PM, was the most sensational ex- when Mr. Stone left New York to
pose of the tragedy of the surviv- join the underground horde of
immigrants on their way to Pal-
estine, by special arrangements
I. F. Stone will be the prin-
with a representative of Haganah.
cipal speaker at the conference
of Jewish organizational dele-
There were many delays and
gates called for Sunday after-
changes in proposed routes, vafi-
noon, Jan. 5, in the Brown nus governments' placing ob-
Memorial Chapel of Temple
stacles in the way of the home-
Bgth El, to inaugurate the 1947
less. The authpr of the great
Detroit Histadrut Labor Pales-
story of the underground migra-
tine (Gewerkshaften) cam-
tion was able to observe condi-
paign for $150,000.
tions in Poland, Germany and

ing Jews becauSe it was the first
revelatory reportorial account of
its kind to be published by a
daily newspaper in this country.
Until Mr. Stone undertook to
travel with Jewish immigrants
underground on the road to
Palestine, by devious routes, by
hitting against all types of oppo-
sition, until the immigrants man-
aged to board the unseaworthy
vessels which have become
known as "floating coffins," the
accounts given of their travels
were contained either in reports
of investigators or of Jewish or-
ganizations.

Personal Experiences

Czechoslovakia, and he had occa-
sion to get the viewpoints on the
entire Jewish situation from the
survivors themselves.
Credit to UNRRA
Mr. Stone gives full credit for
sincere accomplishments t o
UNRRA, which struggled . to do
its best with limited means, and
to the Joint Distribution Com-
mittee. He praises the American
Zionists who made up the crew
on the freighter whose cargo con-
sisted of 1,015 persons, including

568 Halutzim bound for settle-
ment in collective Palestine col-
onies.
Because all were interned by
the British, the author had an
opportunity to record the sensa-
tional migration from beginning
to end—from the beginnings in
blood-stained Europe to the end
in Palestine where the cruelty of
British rule interfered with the
free settlement of the immi-
grants.
Will the British ban their book
in Palestine—as they did Ira
Hirschmann's "A Life Line to a

PIVI's favorite correspondent
brought existing conditions to
light after his personal experi-
ences with the immigrants. His
reports are now incorporated in
a book, "Underground to Pales-
tine," published by Boni & Gaer,
15 E. 40th St., New York 16, N. Y.
It is an objective and dispas-
sionate story; and it is evident on
every page that the author has
tried to be as factual as possible, Promised Land"? V We can be
without injecting his personal pretty sure of it—in view of the
sentiments. Had he sentimental- justified sense of outrage ex-

ized, he would have shouted his
anger to the high heavens against
the politiciang who have placed
all sorts of obstacles in the paths
of those who are trying to escape
from memories of persecution and
humiliation and from lands which

pressed by Mr. Stone against the
machinations of the - British and
their policy of deporting Jews, to
Cyprus and elsewhere.
Mr. Stone's book will go down
on record as one -of the very
great outcries for justice in an

still tolerate pogroms, to the only era of injustice.

Hanukah Reverie

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By ZELDA LANDSMAN

Ox blessed tongues of pointed light
Leaping and licking at the night,
Arrayed in a Menorah row,
How proud and radiant your glo•.'

How proud and radiant you loom,
Stretching defiance to your doom;
Piercing the darkness, deep and vast:
Lending your light until the last.

Lending your light throughout the Jews
Of grim oppression, dread and fears;
And as of old, your flame renewed,
Rekindles hope and fortitude.

Rekindles hope and courage true
As that great miracle we knew
When one small light its fuel regained,
And through the centuries remained.

And through the centuries your rays,
Svmsbolically bate kept ablaze
A true and steadfast "beacon light,"
Through bitter years of hopeless plight.

Through bitter years of dark despair
Your gleam has fired us to dare,
And kept our hope and faith alive,
And taught our spirit to survive.

And taught our spirit to be proud,
Fearless, undaunted and unbowed,
Waiting the day when once again
We shall return triumphant men.

We shall return forever free—
Proud followers of Maccabee,
With joyous song and bugle blast,
Returning to our land at last!

The melting tallow drips away.
The candle fires stretch and sway.
The night is long, and deep, and dark—
But these small lights will leave their mark;
And though- they fade away from sight,
These blessed tongues of pointed light-,
Arrayed in a Menorah row,
Shall leave an everlasting glow.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The author of this poem.
Mrs. Harry Landsman, is a former school
teacher. Her poems were published in a
number of magazines. "Hanukah Reverie
first was read by Mrs. Landsman at the meet-
ing of Huntington Woods Hadassah" Chapter.
Later it was, read at a meeting of (Russell
Woods Hadassah to musical accompaniment
and before the Central and University Hadaa-
sah Unita. -