The words to the song are from a poem written by Hannah Szenes, a young Jewish woman who joined the British army during WWII and was trained as a paratrooper. She then volunteered to parachute into Yugoslavia to help Jews about to be deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp.
On a mission, she was captured, imprisoned, tortured (though she wouldn't tell them anything), and refused a blindfold when she was executed by a firing squad at twenty-three years old. She is known as a national hero in Israel.
Eli, Eli
English Translation:
My God, My God
May these things never end:
The sand and the sea
The rush of the water
The lighting of the heavens
The prayer of the heart
Another poem found in her death cell after her execution:
One - two - three... eight feet long
Two strides across, the rest is dark...
Life is a fleeting question mark
One - two - three... maybe another week.
Or the next month may still find me here,
But death, I feel is very near.
I could have been 23 next July
I gambled on what mattered most, the dice were cast.
I lost.
1 comment:
i don't think she lost...in the end.
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