Blessed Is The Match

Summary

Directed by Roberta Grossman and narrated by three-time Academy Award nominee Joan Allen, Blessed Is the Match is a new documentary drama about Hannah Senesh, World War II poet and diarist who became a paratrooper, resistance fighter, and Jewish "Joan of Arc." Hannah left her native Hungary for a kibbutz, joining other idealistic Jews to help build a Jewish state.  Safe in Palestine in 1944 she joined a mission with 31 other Jewish parachutists returning to Europe to rescue Jews in her native Hungary (the only military rescue mission for Jews during the Holocaust). Hannah parachuted behind enemy lines, was captured, tortured and ultimately executed by the Nazis. Yet her mother Catherine survived as a witness to her daughter's heroism. With unprecedented access to the Senesh family archive, and through interviews with colleagues, eyewitness accounts, and Hannah's personal diary entries and poetry, Blessed Is the Match tells an incredible story of a uniquely talented and complex woman who came of age in a world descending into madness.

Awards

Submitted for an Oscar - 2008. (Documentary category)