I don’t know, but something in my gut tells me that something really big is going to happen tomorrow.
On June 4, 1944, an soldier from Detroit, Sam Lucido, entered Rome with the 3rd I.D. Two days later (D-Day) he met a young girl named Assunta. Two years later, he returned to marry her. I was their third child.
This evening at 6:48 pm eastern, the first PIR’s jumped.
"Hannah Szenes relaxes in her native Budapest, Hungary, before the war.
Very gifted, Hannah excelled in her studies before immigrating to Palestine, where she joined a kibbutz.
Her diaries and poems reflect a love of life exceeded only by her fierce commitment to the Jewish people.
One of a daring band of parachutists sent into Yugoslavia to rescue Allied pilots and further Jewish resistance, she was captured after crossing into Hungary.
Tortured, she refused to reveal radio codes.
Her poem 'Blessed Is the Match' became an emblem of her own heroic self-sacrifice.
It included the line 'Blessed is the match consumed in kindling flame.' "
"Immigrating to Palestine from her native Slovakia in 1939, Haviva Reik joined the Hagana (Jewish military organization) to fight the Nazis.
Following that service, Reik volunteered for the even more dangerous duty of parachutist, hoping that she could return to her native land to rescue her fellow Jews.
Landing near Banská Bystrica, Slovakia, on September 21, 1944, she sought to reach leaders of the Jewish Resistance in Bratislava.
Fierce fighting impeded her mission, and Reik, her fellow parachutists, and local partisans retreated to the mountains.
Captured by the SS, she was fatally shot on November 20."
"About 250 Palestinian Jews volunteered to serve as paratroopers in the British Army--a highly dangerous mission.
The ones selected were chosen from the best and brightest Eastern European Jews, those who could speak Balkan languages and were familiar with Balkan customs and geography.
"After training, 32 Jews parachuted into the Balkans, Austria, and France to spy for the British.
Once the Jews finished their Allied missions, the British permitted them to help their Jewish coreligionists.
Although the British were at first opposed to the training of Palestinian Jews to fight, the British deputy minister of state in Cairo, Lord Walter Moyne, finally agreed to their training.
Cynically, he recognized that parachuting the bravest Jews on suicide missions in Eastern Europe would permanently remove them from Palestine.
"One of the most famous Palestinian-Jewish paratroopers was Hannah Szenes, a Hungarian-born poet.
Like most others, she successfully completed her mission for the British. But once her task for them was completed, she was caught and executed by the Germans.
nother of the group, Enzo Sereni, was trained by the British and dropped into northern Italy in May 1944.
Wearing the uniform of a British captain, he was captured and sent to the Dachau, Germany, concentration camp, where he was a leading figure among the prisoners."