Crash of the Heavens: The Remarkable Story of Hannah Senesh and the Only Military Mission to Rescue Europe's Jews During World War II

Crash of the Heavens: The Remarkable Story of Hannah Senesh and the Only Military Mission to Rescue Europe's Jews During World War II

The awe-inspiring and largely untold story of Hannah Senesh, a female paratrooper in World War II whose courage and sacrifice during a daring mission to rescue Europe’s Jews left an indelible mark on history. In the years before World War II, thousands of young Jewish men and women escaped Europe, seeking safety in the British Mandate for Palestine. By 1942, horrifying reports began to spread about ghettos being liquidated, industrialized killing centers in Poland, and a chilling campaign to exterminate Europe’s entire Jewish population. When it became clear that the Allies were unwilling to spare any forces from the war effort to save civilians, the Jewish community in Palestine came up with a daring plan. Working with British Military Intelligence, an elite unit of young Jewish paratroopers volunteered to return to Eastern Europe. Once behind enemy lines, they would use their expertise in the local languages and terrain to rescue thousands of downed Allied pilots and escaped POWs who were trapped with no way to communicate—highly trained airmen desperately needed by the British and American air forces to fly more bombing missions. At the same time, these volunteer commandos would help Jewish civilians escape deportation to Auschwitz and other death camps or take up arms in resistance against the Nazis. Hannah Senesh was one of only three female paratroopers who risked everything to infiltrate occupied Europe. In 1939, at just eighteen years old, Hannah emigrated from Hungary to the British Mandate for Palestine, where she dreamed of being a poet and a schoolteacher. Instead, she became a poet and a paratrooper. Five years after fleeing Europe, Hannah parachuted back into occupied territory as a freedom fighter with the most crucial role in her team: the wireless operator tasked with sending and deciphering top-secret British radio codes. Though captured almost immediately after crossing the border into Hungary, she refused to give up her radio codes or any information about her mission, despite enduring months of horrific torture. Her final act of defiance—choosing to die before a firing squad rather than beg for clemency—cemented her legendary status as the “Jewish Joan of Arc.” Hannah’s legacy lives on today in the widely published diary she’d kept since age thirteen and in her poetry which has inspired generations. Each year on Holocaust Remembrance Day, a short poem Hannah composed on the shores of the Mediterranean in 1942 is sung at ceremonies around the world. Titled “Eli, Eli,” or “My God, My God,” it has become a modern hymn, taught in schools, sung in synagogues, and printed in thousands of prayerbooks. More than just a gripping historical account of Hannah’s life and afterlife, Crash of the Heavens offers a powerful reminder of the human spirit’s ability to shine, even in the darkest of times. “Powerful . . . Cinematic . . . Douglas Century’s Crash of the Heavens excavates the brilliant young woman—frustrated, lonely, headstrong, determined—long encrusted in myth. . . . Her story, told here with great intimacy and detail, is riveting. . . . . A stirring testament to both her undeniable gifts and tragic fate.” — Forward “Douglas Century’s Crash of the Heavens brings to life the headstrong, charismatic heroine who was both a fearless warrior and a precocious writer. . . . Mr. Century, a veteran investigative journalist, has drawn on those writings, as well as many other firsthand accounts, to give his narrative a rich, novelistic sheen. Structurally, Mr. Century uses short chapters to create a tick-tock cadence of Senesh’s final months while also broadening his lens to capture the courageous exploits and casual barbarisms of a genocidal age. In cinematic detail, the author limns the visceral intensity of a world gone mad.” — Wall Street Journal “Dou­glas Cen­tu­ry retells Han­nah Senesh’s sto­ry with a vital urgency and rel­e­vance for today. The result: a page-turn­er of a book that reads almost like a novel. . . . Much of the his­to­ri­og­ra­phy of the Holo­caust focus­es on men, and when it tells women’s sto­ries, they tend to be vic­tims. We can­not only know about Anne Frank’s attic. We must also know of Han­nah Senesh’s parachute.” —Jewish Book Council “Mesmerizing . . . Crash of the Heavens is a page-turner. Century is able to transmit pride and pain on the page like few can. . . . Meticulously researched, written with cinematic flair and one of the best books of 2025.” — Jewish Journal “In breathless prose and cinematic detail, the book presents the men and women from all backgrounds joined in concert to save something of European Jewry. We hear the roar of airplane engines, feel the wind as they jump, and brace for impact as they land. We follow them through Eastern European woodlands and shadow them through city streets. . . . This is a book of inspiration for our time, when heroism and self-sacrifice have lost their luster.” — Kirkus Reviews “Ha