Aaronsohn, Sarah

Daughter of Malka and Efraim-Fishel. She was born on January 6, 1890 in Zichron Ya’akov. She studied at the colony’s school and later learned French and German. From her youth she had been tested, with nobility and simplicity of manner. She took part in the community’s social activities, including theater performances and riding tours. In the spring of 1914 she married an affluent Bulgarian Jew living in Constantinople and moved to this city. However, not long after she returned to her father’s house and on her way there she witnessed the horrors of the massacre of the Armenians by the Turks and rumors about the persecution of the Yishuv in Eretz Israel. When she arrived in Zichron Yaakov, she joined the Nili group (“Netzach Yisrael Iskar”), which was established to help the British forces conquer the land from the Turks, and worked in the Attiliut Agricultural Attitudes Station. After the Turks discovered a NILI pigeon next to Caesarea (4.9.1917), the army surrounded Zichron Yaakov and the head of the Aaronsohn family responded harshly to the rescue of the group. Sarah herself had gone through four days of inferno torture but had said nothing, and replied with silences or scorns and threats of vengeance. Before they were about to transfer her to Damascus, she managed to fire herself from her pistol, and on the 7th of Tishrei, 5710 (9.10.1917) she took her soul. In a last letter she managed to convey to the family on one of the torture days she wrote, among other things: “We sacrificed ourselves but saved the people, we redeemed the land.” She was laid to rest in the Zichron Yaakov cemetery. She left a father, three brothers and a sister. Among the books written about her: “Sarah the hero of Nili” by Dvora Omer, “Sarah Shalhevet Nili” by her brother Alexander Aaronsohn.