Hannah Szenes (often anglicized as Hannah Senesh or Chanah Senesh; Hebrew: חנה סנש; Hungarian: Szenes Anna; 17 July 1921 – 7 November 1944) was a Hungarian Jewish poet and a Special Operations Executive (SOE) member.

She was one of 37 Jewish SOE recruits from Mandate Palestine parachuted by the British into Yugoslavia during the Second World War to assist anti-Nazi forces and ultimately in the rescue of Hungarian Jews about to be deported to the German death camp at Auschwitz.

After her mother thought it was too expensive, Szenes was declared a "gifted student" and allowed to only pay double the usual amount.

The realization that the situation of the Jews in Hungary was becoming precarious prompted Szenes to embrace Zionism, and she joined Maccabea, a Hungarian Zionist youth movement and learned Hebrew.

[4] Szenes graduated in 1939 and decided to emigrate to Mandatory Palestine in order to study in the Girls' Agricultural School at Nahalal.

After landing, they learned the Germans had already occupied Hungary, so the men decided to call off the mission as too dangerous.

At the border, she and her companions were arrested by Hungarian gendarmes, who found her British military transmitter, used to communicate with the SOE and other partisans.

Transferred to a Budapest prison, Szenes was repeatedly interrogated and tortured, but only revealed her name and refused to provide the transmitter code, even when her mother was also arrested.

[13] During the trial of Rudolf Kastner, who was a controversial figure[14] involved in negotiating with the Nazis to save a number of Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust, Szenes's mother testified that during the time her daughter was imprisoned, Kastner's people had advised her not to obtain a lawyer for her daughter.