SYNOPSIS|
“HANNAH SENESH”

The action takes place in Hannah’s cell in a Hungarian prison, 1943.

Stark reality and memories surround Hannah Senesh, a strong-willed, young Jewish Hungarian woman who has been captured by the Nazis after parachuting behind enemy lines in an attempt to rescue both British pilots and Hungarian Jews.  She is determined to withstand the frequent interrogations of the Warden, who is equally as determined that Hannah reveal the secret code to her military radio. 

Based on the life of Israel ’s most beloved heroine and poet, “Hannah Senesh” shows Hannah recalling meaningful, often joyous,  events from her past as a mental escape from the Warden’s torture.  As pain and fear start to overwhelm her, Hannah, now 23 years old, envisions memories from her childhood, with her beloved father, Bela, a revered poet and playwright, her mother, Catherine, and brother, George.  Through the prism of her memory, we see how a brilliant, 17 year old woman gives up the privileged, though endangered, life of the Jewish Hungarian intelligentsia, to become a woman “of the land” in Israel, choosing to do menial farm work as she tries to find the best way to contribute to the Jewish homeland.  She can not convince her widowed mother to leave Hungary , and George feels obligated to finish his education before joining her. 

When Hannah learns of Hitler’s final solution, she joins 31 other Jews who become British paratroopers, planning to return to Hungary to form a Jewish resistance movement.  Among the group is Yoel, the young man who most intrigued Hannah when they briefly met after her arrival in Palestine .   It is the memory of their love which truly sustains her. 

When his efforts to extract the code from Hannah fail, the Warden imprisons Hannah’s mother, who had refused to escape to Palestine , believing the status of her deceased husband would protect the family from the fate of other Jews.  Yet, despite her anguish at her mother’s imprisonment, Hannah continually professes ignorance about the code.

Hannah reaches out to other prisoners, informing them of news she hears and making paper dolls for their children.  She impacts everyone who meets her, impressing even one of her guards with her warmth, joy, courage, intelligence and creativity.  It is that guard who allows Hannah to briefly reunite with Yoel, who has been captured and brought to the same prison.  Distressed by her weakened condition, Yoel tells Hannah to reveal whatever she may know, but Hannah insists on persevering.  After months of incarceration, Hannah’s knowledge of plans or a code is useless to the Nazis.  However, the Warden’s frustration and anger over Hannah’s refusal to divulge what she knows has become a battle of wills.  Only in a later memory do we see that Hannah does, indeed, know the code.  Hannah is “visited” in her cell by one final figure who, she believes at first, has come to continue her torture.  However, the man is her father, who has come, in death, to finally release her from prison.