On the border between Slovakia and Hungary is a large forest, the kind that brings to mind the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm, a forest so thick that when you enter it, the sun disappears, even in the middle of the day.
In 1942, this forest was infiltrated by a small group made up primarily of Jews trying to flee Nazi-occupied Slovakia, where the first train to Auschwitz had just left the station. They were attempting to escape to Hungary, which at the time was still relatively free.
This was not their first attempt; a few days earlier, they had reached the area with the aid of professional smugglers – who promptly betrayed them to soldiers stationed on the border. Most of the group were killed or caught by the Nazis, but under cover of darkness and in the chaos of the moment, some of them managed to run away to temporary safety. Now, they tried again to escape the country.
Among the fugitives were Matilda and Eliezer Galtstein, together with their two-year-old daughter Tova and Matilda’s sister Hilda. Their son Baruch, who would become one of the heroes of the amazing family story he would share with us more than eighty years later, had not yet been born.

This time they managed to make it into the forest before the shooting started, but the darkness and tangled overgrowth turned out to be a double-edged sword: The gunfire forced them to all disperse, and when they later regrouped deep inside the forest, they were horrified to learn that Tova wasn’t with any of them. What were the odds of a small girl, not even three years old, surviving in a terrifying forest, filled with monsters that were all too real?
For three days, they scoured the forest, calling their little daughter’s name, alternately shouting and whispering as they grew more and more desperate. Then, finally, they found her – frightened and exhausted but healthy and whole – waiting for them under one of the trees.
Was this miracle the end of their travails? Not really.
They arrived in Budapest with forged papers, mourning everything and everyone they’d lost and fearing what the future might bring (Matilda and Hilda’s parents had already been sent to Auschwitz and murdered there on the day they arrived). For two years, they lived in relative safety in the city, but then came the day they had feared the most: on March 19, 1944, German forces entered Hungary, bringing with them all the terror and horrors of the Holocaust.
For the sake of their own survival, Eliezer and Matilda decided to temporarily break up their small family. Tova, who was now almost five years old, was handed over to a convent which also served as an orphanage, while Eliezer and Matilda each lived in separate hiding places. Every so often they would meet at a predetermined location in one of the city’s public parks.
One day in July 1944, Matilda did not show up at their meeting place. Eliezer learned later that she’d been arrested a few days earlier. Her forged papers, combined with her broken Hungarian, marked her out as a foreigner trying to hide her own identity and therefore – a suspected spy. She was thrown in prison. Matilda was certain that her fate and that of her unborn child was sealed, but she hadn’t taken into account her new cellmate.


The 23-year-old young Jewish woman who welcomed her introduced herself as “Aniko, or Hannah.” She was younger than Matilda, but had spent more time in prison – she’d arrived a month and a half earlier – and had received training for dealing with such situations. She extended a hand to Matilda and quickly became her support.
The woman’s full name, as you’ve already guessed, was Hannah Senesh (Szenes). The talented writer was born in Hungary, made Aliyah to the Land of Israel and then volunteered to serve in the British Army and joined the group of volunteer-paratroopers dropped over Nazi-occupied Europe. On March 15, 1944, she parachuted into Yugoslavia together with Reuven Dafni, Yonah Rosen, and Abba Berdichev.
At first, she joined a local partisan group, but in June it was decided to move forward with her main mission, which was supposed to take place on Hungarian soil. She attempted to cross the border and was caught by Hungarian soldiers. She was then transferred to a Budapest jail, where she was charged with treason against the Hungarian motherland and tortured to reveal the identities of the other paratroopers.
She refused.
Senesh shared her burning faith in the justice of their cause with Matilda, as well as her experience in dealing with Gestapo interrogators. She listened to her, encouraged her, and gave her strength, especially after the endless rounds of torture Matilda endured. She advised her to steal and destroy her forged identification papers, so that the government would have no physical proof against her.
“In the end, it didn’t really change anything,” said Baruch, Matilda’s son, “Lemke (the Gestapo commander in charge of the prison) would always tell her ‘I don’t need this document to execute you, I will execute you, anyway.”
Did Senesh really believe that they would get a fair trial? It’s hard to know, but when Matilda revealed that she was pregnant, it was clear to Senesh that she could not wait for the final outcome of Matilda’s arrest – she needed to escape, and soon.
In Hannah Senesh’s writings, which are mostly preserved in the Senesh Family Archive at the National Library of Israel (courtesy of Ori and Mirit Eisen) – in poems, diaries, and letters – we see the strong relationship she shared with her mother Katherine, but also her special attitude towards motherhood in general:
If there exists in the world a token of honor and respect,
(Hannah Senesh, “Mother,” 1933)
a wreath of loyalty, of love,
there is only one worthy of it:
Your good mother!
Let your heart harbor gratitude,
and let your lips sing a prayer,
Hear now the most beautiful word in the world:
Mother!
“I would like to erect a monument to my mother—a mother who, from my childhood to this day, allowed my brother and me to set sail into the world to seek our own paths, forgoing her right to hold us back. This is not just the image of my mother; many Jewish mothers of our generation share this fate.”
(From Hannah Senesh’s diary, December 14, 1940)
When Senesh explained her escape plan to Matilda, the latter panicked. The route sounded too complex and the odds of success too low. But Senesh insisted and encouraged her to do it – if not for herself, then for the child in her womb.
Was this an escape plan meant for Senesh herself? Was young Hannah, who was far more fit than the pregnant woman living in inhuman conditions, capable of using this route herself? We’ll probably never know, but many believe that she didn’t try to flee since she was certain she would be released – which, as we know, she wasn’t.

Matilda followed every stage of the plan, step by step: When they came to take her for interrogation (again), she feigned falling down the stairs. She needed to be precise in her fall – not too hard, so as not to harm her baby, but hard enough to have her sent to the infirmary.
The infirmary was on the third floor of the building. It was much quieter than the rest of the prison and its windows weren’t barred. Matilda waited for the nurse to leave the room. When the coast was clear, she tied some sheets together and carefully climbed down out of the window, down to the street which was still part of war-torn Budapest but still safer than being in Gestapo custody.
Hannah Senesh was executed not long after, on November 7, 1944.
On February 13, 1945, Budapest was liberated by the Red Army. Immediately after being freed, Matilda turned to the convent where she had put the thing most dear to her – her daughter, Tova. She was told they had no such girl.
But by now, Matilda knew a thing or two about how useful windows could be. Despite her advanced pregnancy, she climbed up to the convent’s rear window and forced it open. There, she immediately identified Tova, who in turn recognized her mother. They left together, to meet Eliezer who had been switching between dozens of hiding places in the last few months.
Shortly afterward, Matilda gave birth to her son, Baruch. His body was covered in bruises, a result of the tortures suffered by her mother, but was otherwise healthy. Following his birth, the Galtstein family made Aliyah after much suffering and not a few miracles, where they could finally raise their children in peace and happiness.

The story of the rescue of Matilda and Baruch by Hannah Senesh has accompanied the family for many decades. Senesh became a national hero in Israel after her death, but their connection was personal.
“Mother would tell of it, again and again, to anyone who would only listen,” Baruch said, adding that every year, on the Hebrew anniversary of Hannah’s execution, the 21st of Cheshvan, he would say the kadish prayer for the clever, brave, young woman who saved their lives.
A few years ago, Baruch traveled to Budapest with other relatives to explore the family’s roots in Hungary. They had their picture taken in front of the building which once served as the Gestapo headquarters, where Matilda fled through the window while carrying Baruch in her womb.
Above them was a sign placed there shortly after the war:
“Thousands suffered in this building.
In the dark days of 1944, between March 19 and December 31, they were arrested by the German Gestapo and most were sent to the death camps.
The few who remain alive remember them.
Budapest 1946.”
