"Chicken " & Hungaria Ops 1943 / 1944

Operation " Chicken "

Yoel Palgi ( survived )  Sgt.Nussbacher  (Mikey/Hulbert)

Palgi was born in Cluj, Austria-Hungary (now in Romania) in 1918. In 1939, he immigrated and joined Kibbutz Afikim in Mandatory Palestine. He was a Palmach parachutist who was dropped by Britain into Yugoslavia during the Second World War to assist in the rescue of Hungarian Jews from the Holocaust.

The Yishuv in Mandatory Palestine had attempted one operation earlier in Romania to provide succour to Jews threatened by the Nazi Holocaust by thwarting their deportation to concentration camps, but it had been compromised, and the two agents dispatched, Arye Fichman of Kibbutz Beit Oren and Liova Gukowsky (Ahisar) Kibbutz Yagur, were captured because the foreign contacts used were often triple or quadruple agents who were German officers who would pass on the details of these kinds of operation. The failure rate of Allied operations to penetrate into that country was high, and it was decided to focus efforts on gaining a toehold in Yugoslavia instead.

 The volunteers were split into two groups, with one, consisting of Hannah Szenes, Abba Berdichev, Reuven Dafni and a Ma'agan member, Jona Rozen, parachuting into the north of Yugoslavia on 14 March. Palgi's group were flown to Bari where they met up with Enzo Sereni. They were scheduled to make their drop on the first night of Passover, 7 April 1944, which meant preparing for a seder even as they were flying over enemy territory, but adverse weather conditions delayed their departure, and they eventually parachuted into Croatia a week later, on 13 April, dropping into an area generally under the control of Tito's communist partisans.

They met up with, and attached themselves to, the partisan army's 6th Corps in the Papok Mountains.The German occupation of Hungary forced changes in their plan, rendering the task of infiltration and carrying out their work even more hazardous. In the meantime the two groups were united on 6 May. They spent some time with the partisans,engaging in guerilla warfare, sabotage activities and the securing of escape lines for Allied airmen, while worrying that they were unable to implement the real purpose of their mission, helping Jews escape the harrying plight they were being subjected to in Hungary.

( left : Reuven Dafni (Capt. Gary )

Hannah Szenes was particularly disturbed by news leaking out from Hungary, and, together with
Reuven Dafni, snuck over the border in late May,having prearranged with Palgi to meet up either before the Dohány Street Synagogue or, failing that, the city's main cathedral. Eventually Palgi and Goldstein managed to cross over into Hungary via the Drava River with the assistance of smugglers, on 19 June, some ten days after Szenes' capture and unaware of her fate.   Almost from the onset of their venturing inside Hungary, Palgi and Goldstein fell under close surveillance by Hungarian counterintelligence, which had a plant within the community. On reaching Budapest they met with leaders of the Aid and Rescue Committee in Budapest, such as Rudolf Kasztner, who at the time was negotiating with Adolf Eichmann to endeavor to save Jews by forging a deal to exchange them for trucks.

According to one account, Kasztner, aware of Szenes's arrest, and that the Gestapo were looking for the other two, was horrified by Palgi's arrival at this delicate juncture. He had known Palgi from childhood since they had both grown up in Cluj, and advised him the best way to obtain immunity was to turn himself into the Gestapo and inform them he was acting on behalf of the Jewish Agency, and had come to negotiate with them to that end. Before he could do so, however, he was arrested, on 27 June, by the Hungarian authorities, and detained in a cell not far from where Hannah Szenes languished in prison. His companion in arms, Goldstein, remained at large for a while, though Kasztner after leading him to his parents who had been selected for the Kastner train, also persuaded him to turn himself in. Palgi was tortured to the point that he tried to commit suicide. 

His interrogators revived him, so that they could continue their torture to extract information he refused to divulge. He devised a means of communication with Hannah Szenes, who was locked in a cell opposite his own, by using a broken mirror to flash morse code, and thus managed to retain details of her experiences, though some details in his account, it has been suggested, may have been imaginary. He later bribed an Hungarian guard to allow him to speak with her directly.

Some hope of a respite occurred on 11 September, as Admiral Horthy was engaged in negotiating a ceasefire with the Soviets. That day, Palgi, Szenes and Goldstein, who had also been captured in the meantime, were taken from their Gestapo handlers and relocated into a Hungarian prison. On 15 October, after Horthy broadcast over national radio news of the armistice, a joint operation by Nazi Germany together with the Arrow Cross Party staged a coup d'etat, and soon after they were arraigned before an Hungarian military court,which ordered that they be sent to the Kistarcsa internment camp.

En route, Palgi managed to escape from the train that was transporting him and Goldstein then managed to make his way back to Budapest where he joined members of the pioneering Zionist underground ( his escape detail version is not clear and can not be confirmed )

After the Soviet liberation of Budapest, Palgi went to Cluj to see if he could find his parents and relatives, but it was too late. He did manage to arrange for Hannah Szenes' mother to be secreted out and settled in Palestine.

Peretz Goldstein +  (1923-1944)  (Jones )

Was born on July 4, 1923 in the town of  Marish-Lush in Transylvania, Romania, who was murdered  by the Nazis in the Oranienburg concentration camp on March 1, 1945.

He was born to his parents Rachel and Joseph Dov Goldstein, a family where the children received religious and national Jewish education, but also acquired a European secular education. "On Saturday nights, as we sat around the table singing the songs, the server angels seemed to be floating around our house," Flora, his sister, wrote. Peretz was a quiet boy and diligent student and at an early age joined the Habonim Zionist youth movement, who was passionate about learning Hebrew and stood out, mainly in the conceptual and cultural field.

He planned to train for immigration to Israel, but when pro-Nazi rule in Romania closed the pioneering training farm, he immigrated in 1940 and was sent to a youth group in Kibbutz Afikim. There he met  members from Transylvania, including Yona Rosenfeld-Rosen and Joel Nussbacher-Pelagi, who are several years older and who will be his missionary friends. He joined their group, which later sat in the Kinneret courtyard and prepared for the establishment of Kibbutz Maagan.

In British paratrooper coverall , Cairo 1943

In December 1942, he volunteered for Company A in the Palmach, at a time when the danger of a German invasion from North Africa was posing in his country. A year later, his commanders recommended that he drop in occupied Europe and he volunteered. Yona Rosen tried to dissuade the commanders from recruiting for this mission, even at his young age, but increased his determination to go on a mission. The fact that a Hungarian and Romanian ruler was to his credit, since the Transylvania was annexed during the war to Hungary, he gone through preparatory courses for the Haganah, Egyptian training and a British paratrooping class at Ramat David, for the mission he received a false identity from the British: Sergeant Jones and : Mickey, VARGA JOHNS, His military role was to gather intelligence and help rescue Allied airmen . The role on behalf of the Yishuv leadership was most important to him - to save Jews and organization of self-defense.

Enroute to Bari , Italy 1944

On April 13, 1944, Peretz Goldstein was parachuted with Joel Pelagi in Yugoslavia, waiting to cross the border into Hungary, working among Tito's partisans in the Papok Mountains. Two months later, the two crossed the border to Hungary, shortly after moving to Hannah Szenes, not knowing that she was already trapped. Pelagi was also captured, but Peretz managed to hide for a while in Budapest, in a camp of Jews awaiting their transfer to Spain as part of a settlement between the Hungarian Rescue Committee and the authorities. To his amazement, he discovered his parents in the camp, who planned to come to Israel, where they thought their son was. Peretz gave up the possibility of leaving Hungary with his parents and the rest of the camp's Jews, saying goodbye to them and seeking escape routes for his imprisoned friends.

Above : L to R  Palgi and Goldstein RAF Ramat David 1944

The plans that were unsuccessful and in July 1944 were also captured and investigated by the Hungarian and Gestapo authorities. With the withdrawal of the German army by the advancing Red Army approaching Budapest, Goldstein and Pelgi were sent by train to Sachsenhausen Camp ,Germany. The two tried to escape from the train, but only Joel Pelgi succeeded, while Peretz Goldstein was taken to the Oranienburg concentration camp. According latest information he was used as forced labour at the nearby aircraft factory of Dornier Werke.

He was last seen there on December 8 and was executed there on March 1, 1945, just months before the Allied victory over Nazi Germany. The body of Peretz Goldstein, a paratrooper, was not found, but a memorial to his memory is found in the military cemetery on Mount Herzl, in the part of the seven paratroopers who fell in office during the Second World War mission.

On the 10th anniversary of his mission, Kibbutz Maagan , hosted a memorial to Peretz Goldstein on July 29, 1954, a large state-wide rally was held on the 10th anniversary of the paratroopers' mission and the seven lost on that mission . During the celebration thePiper Cub plane crashed inside the crowd killing 15 people in what became known as a "mourning disaster" which also killed four of the paratroopers which survived the WWII missions.

KZ Sachsenhausen , Oranienburg Dornier Flugzeugwerke 1944

Reuven Dafni 

Daphni was born in 1913 in Zagreb, Yugoslavia. He was a member of a Zionist movement. When he was fourteen, the family moved to Vienna. In Austria, Daphne was exposed for the first time to anti-Semitism and its affiliation with Zionism became stronger. He began attending a Jewish school and studied Hebrew to immigrate to Israel and settle there. In 1936, Reuven immigrated to Eretz Israel and was one of the founders of Kibbutz Ein Gev. In January 1940, he enlisted in the British Army, where he was assigned to establish the Yugoslav section to deal with partisans.

Reuven met the unit of Israeli land that was supposed to plummet past enemy lines, rescue Jews and smuggle them to the country and join its ranks. Like Hannah Szenes and her friends, he was sent to a parachute school in Ramat David and after a short training he was taken to Cairo and from there to Barry, Italy. Left sometime in 1945 promoted as Leutenant, Jewish Brigade)

Reuven on the way to Bari 1944

At midnight on March 13, 1944, Hannah Szenes, Yona Rosen, Abba Berdichev and Reuven Daphni -  were  parachuted in Yugoslavia in order to reach later on Hungary and Berdychev to reach Romania;  For unknown reasons Reuven Daphni remained in Yugoslavia, where he was to receive Jews and transfer them to Italy. Over Yugoslavia, Reuben jumpped first, followed by his other friends, while the partisans who were waiting for them lead to one of the villages. After a few days' march they arrived to the Tito's partisan military headquarters, Reuven and Hannah Szenes met with General Roseman, and he sent them to the Croatian partisans. They marched for another twelve days, accompanied by Croatian territory, and stayed there for about three months, where they were joined by two young guardian Jews, a French soldier and a Christian young woman who exchanged her identity with Hannah Szenes.

In Yugoslavia 1944

On June 9, 1944, Hannah Szenes and the three boys crossed the border into Hungary. She agreed with Reuven that he would wait three weeks for her departure, and if she did not arrive by then, he would be caught. Reuven waited for her for six weeks in Yugoslavia, and with the help of the partisans, dozens of Jews escaped. OSE Headquarters in Cairo received the news of the capture of Hannah Szenes. Hannah was tortured, tried and executed on November 7, 1944.

After the mission, Daphni returned to Cairo and asked to join the Jewish Brigade. A chance meeting in Italy with one of his brothers revealed to him the fate of his family - his father and older brother survived and after a stay in a refugee camp in Italy, he immigrated to Israel. Reuven followed them, and upon his return to Israel he learned that his mother had been murdered in 1941.

Reuven returned to the kibbutz, raised money to buy weapons, and then worked in the Foreign Ministry diplomatic service - a consul general in Los Angeles and an ambassador to several states. From 1982 to 1995, he served as Vice Chairman of the Yad Vashem Executive. Reuven has two children and one grandson, and he currently lives with his partner Nava in Jerusalem. For his achievements for the British Armed Forces during WWII he was promoted from Sgt Major to Leutenant .

Hannah Szenes +  ( July 17, 1921 – November 7, 1944)  "Minnie "

Above ; with Tito's partizans March 1944 ( mid raw) , Reuven Dafni 3rd from left rear 

Szeenes was born on July 17, 1921, to an assimilated Jewish family in Hungary. Her father, Béla, a journalist and playwright, died when Hannah was six years old. She continued to live with her mother, Kathrine, and her brother, György.

She enrolled in a Protestant private school for girls that also accepted Catholic and Jewish pupils; most of those of the Jewish faith had to pay three times the amount Catholics paid. However, Szenes only had to pay twice the regular tuition because she was considered a "Gifted Student". This, along with 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 students organization.

She was a 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.

From left to right : Egyptian ,Reik, Bravermann, Szenes, Reiss,Ben Yaakov ,Yosef Veron 

In 1943, she enlisted in the RAF British Women's Auxiliary as Aircraftwoman 2nd Class. Later the same year, she was recruited into the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and was sent to Egypt for parachute training. Photo above Egypt 1944 , 4th from right after Hermes .

On March 14, 1944, she and colleagues Yoel Palgi and Peretz Goldstein[ were parachuted into Yugoslavia and joined a partisan group. After landing, they learned the Germans had already occupied Hungary, so the men decided to call off the mission as too dangerous.Szenes continued on and headed for the Hungarian border. 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. She was taken to a prison, stripped, tied to a chair, then whipped and clubbed for three days. She lost several teeth as a result of the beating.

Palestine 1943

Hannah Szenes was particularly disturbed by news leaking out from Hungary, and, together with Reuven Dafni, snuck over the border in late May, having prearranged with Palgi to meet up either before the Dohány Street Synagogue or, failing that, the city's main cathedral. Eventually Palgi and Goldstein managed to cross over into Hungary via the Drava River with the assistance of smugglers, on 19 June, some ten days after Szenes' capture and unaware of her fate. 

Almost from the onset of their venturing inside Hungary, Palgi and Goldstein fell under close surveillance by Hungarian counterintelligence, which had a plant within the community. On reaching Budapest they met with leaders of the Aid and Rescue Committee in Budapest, such as Rudolf Kasztner, who at the time was negotiating with Adolf Eichmann to endeavor to save Jews by forging a deal to exchange them for trucks.

According to one account, Kasztner, aware of Szenes's arrest, and that the Gestapo were looking for the other two, was horrified by Palgi's arrival at this delicate juncture. He had known Palgi from childhood since they had both grown up in Cluj, and advised him the best way to obtain immunity was to turn himself into the Gestapo and inform them he was acting on behalf of the Jewish Agency, and had come to negotiate with them to that end.

Before he could do so, however, he was arrested, on 27 June, by the Hungarian authorities, and detained in a cell not far from where Hannah Szenes languished in prison. His companion in arms, Goldstein, remained at large for a while, though Kasztner after leading him to his parents who had been selected for the Kastner train, also persuaded him to turn himself in. Palgi was tortured to the point that he tried to commit suicide. 

His interrogators revived him, so that they could continue their torture to extract information he refused to divulge. He devised a means of communication with Hannah Szenes, who was locked in a cell opposite his own, by using a broken mirror to flash morse code, and thus managed to retain details of her experiences, though some details in his account, it has been suggested, may have been imaginary. He later bribed an Hungarian guard to allow him to speak with her directly.

The guards wanted to know the code for her transmitter so they could find out who the parachutists were and trap others. 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. They threatened to kill her mother if she did not cooperate, but she refused.

While in prison, Szenes used a mirror to flash signals out of the window to prisoners in other cells and communicated using large cut-out letters that she placed in her cell window one at a time and by drawing the Magen David in the dust.

She was tried for treason in Hungary on October 28, 1944. There was an eight-day postponement to give the judges more time to find a verdict, followed by another postponement, this one because of the appointment of a new Judge Advocate.

She was executed by a firing squad on November 7, 1944. 

Some hope of a respite occurred on 11 September, as Admiral Horthy was engaged in negotiating a ceasefire with the Soviets. That day, Palgi, Szenes and Goldstein, who had also been captured in the meantime, were taken from their Gestapo handlers and relocated into a Hungarian prison.

On 15 October, after Horthy broadcast over national radio news of the armistice, a joint operation by Nazi Germany together with the Arrow Cross Party staged a coup d'etat, and soon after they were arraigned before an Hungarian military court,which ordered that they be sent to the Kistarcsa internment camp.  En route, Palgi managed to escape from the train that was transporting him and Goldstein then managed to make his way back to Budapest where he joined members of the pioneering Zionist underground.

After the Soviet liberation of Budapest, Palgi went to Cluj to see if he could find his parents and relatives, but it was too late. He did manage to arrange for Hannah Szenes' mother to be secreted out and settled in Palestine.

She kept diary entries until her last day. One of them read: "In the month of July, I shall be twenty-three/I played a number in a game/The dice have rolled. I have lost," and another: "I loved the warm sunlight."