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Hannah Senesh One Two Three Summary

Decent Essays

Hannah Senesh, author of the poem “One Two Three”, was a Israeli-Hungarian pilot who fought for the rebel cause during WWII. Senesh was captured by the Hungarian army while she was on a mission with the Israeli paratroopers to rescue Hungarian Jews being deported to Auschwitz. Though she was brutally tortured, Senesh never gave the Hungarians information about her mission in order to protect the locations of her fellow soldiers who were still rescuing Hungarian Jews. Found guilty of treason, Senesh was executed on November 7, 1944 by a German firing squad. While she was in prison, Senesh kept a diary, which was published in Hebrew in 1946. Her poem, “One Two Three”, was written in just days before her execution. In “One Two Three”, the only literal action is Senesh’s counting and pacing her tiny cell. Senesh spends the majority of the poem reflecting on the passage of time and her impending execution. At this point, she realizes that her life is almost over and she laments the loss of her future. Though Senesh is physically losing her life, she’s also experiencing loss of control because she is no longer in charge of her fate. For these reasons, the poem fits the anthology’s theme of loss and specifically fits within the loss of control category. Senesh argues that it’s worth risking your life to support causes you care about. In “One Two Three”, the meaning behind Senesh’s poem is clear: she’s reflecting on her death sentence and the loss of her future. Though her purpose

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