 Sarah
Aaronsohn (1890 – October 9, 1917) was a member of Nili,
a ring of Jewish spies working for the British in World
War I, and a sister of notable botanist Aaron Aaronsohn.
Sometimes she is referred to as the "heroine of
Nili."
Sarah was born and died in Zichron Yaakov, Palestine,
which at the time was a province of the Turkish-ruled
Ottoman Empire. She lived briefly in Istanbul until
1915, when she returned home to Zichron Yaakov to escape
an unhappy marriage in December.
On her way from Istanbul to Haifa, Sarah personally
witnessed the Armenian Genocide. In her testimony, she
describes seeing hundreds of bodies of men, women and
babies, sickened Armenians being loaded onto trains
and a massacre of up to 5,000 Armenians by bounding
them to a pyramid of thorns and setting it alight. Since
her trip to Haifa, any allusions to Armenians got her
into a fit of hysteria. According to Chaim Herzog, Sarah
decided to assist British forces after she witnessed
the Armenian genocide by the Ottomans in Anatolia.
Sarah, her brothers Aaron and Alex and their friend
Avshalom Feinberg formed and led Nili. Sarah oversaw
operations of the spy-ring and passed information to
British agents offshore. When Aaron Aaronsohn was away,
she headed the spy operations in Palestine. Sometimes
she travelled widely through Ottoman territory collecting
information useful to the British, and brought it directly
to them in Egypt. In 1917, Alex urged her to remain
in British-controlled Egypt, expecting hostilities by
Ottoman authorities. She nevertheless returned to Zichron
Yaakov to continue Nili activities.
In September 1917, the Ottomans caught her carrier pigeon
with a message to the British and decrypted the Nili
code. In October, the Ottomans surrounded Zichron Yaakov
and arrested numerous people, including Sarah. After
four days of torture, she managed to shoot and kill
herself with a pistol concealed on the premises to avoid
further torture and to protect her colleagues.
In her last letter, she expressed her hope that her
activities in Nili would bring nearer the realization
of a Jewish national home for the Jews in Eretz Israel. |
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