Seventy-seven years after Hannah Szenes and 36 of her Jewish comrades from pre-state Israel parachuted into Slovenia during the Second World War, 107 Israeli paratroopers jumped into the European country on Tuesday, near their original drop zone. The event marked the week of Szenes' 100th birthday anniversary.
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The historic parachute reconstruction was carried out at Krki Airport in Slovenia. The Israeli contingent was joined by paratroopers from Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia and England.
Video: Lilach Shoval
The event included two jumps. On Monday, eight Israeli paratroopers jumped at 12,000
feet with European paratroopers. Then on Tuesday, about 100 delegation members parachuted from 1,000 feet. Among the delegation members was the commander of the IDF's Depth Corps, Maj. Gen. Itai Virov, Paratrooper Brigade commander Col. Yuval Gez, and Brig.-Gen. Ofer Winter, commander of the 98th Paratroopers Division.
After landing, the paratroopers marched through the forests near the town of Draga where Partisan fighters lived during the war.
The members of the delegation were divided into four teams of 27 participants, each including a commander with a rank of Lt. Col. and above, as well as an expert guide in the Holocaust, who accompanied the troops throughout the journey. One of the guides will be Lt. Col. (ret.) Simcha Goldin, the father of Lt. Hadar Goldin, whose remains currently are being held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
On Wednesday, a monument will be erected in memory of the paratroopers who fought bravely and courageously during World War II in the city of Čakovec. The monument will be erected on the spot where Hannah Szenes was imprisoned.
Thursday, the last day of the trip, will focus on Hungarian Jewry and a meeting with the local
Jewish community. The journey will be concluded with a ceremony at the grave of Hannah Szenes, in the cemetery in Kozma, Hungary, in parallel with a ceremony at the Diaspora Museum in Israel.
"The main goal of this journey is to strengthen the sense of mission and the memory of heroism," said Col. Gez, the commander of the IDF Paratrooper's Brigade.
Szenes was one of 250 Jewish men and women from pre-state Israel, or Mandatory British Palestine, who volunteered for operations run by British organizations MI9 and the Special Operations Executive beginning in 1943, of which 37 were selected to carry out the mission.
Their mission was to organize resistance to the Nazis, aid in the rescue of Allied personnel and carry out assignments set by the Jewish Agency of Palestine recruits.
On March 14, 1944, Szenes and two fellow colleagues were parachuted into former Yugoslavia and were arrested by Hungarian police when they tried to cross into Hungary. She refused to reveal anything except her name, despite being tortured in prison, and in October 1944 she was tried for treason. She was then executed by a firing squad on November 7, 1944.
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