Leader of the band Sarah Aaronsohn was joined by her friends and family in Zichron, aiding the British forces with covert operations and intelligence gathering.
Sarah Aaronsohn was born in 1890 in the moshav, now renamed Zichron Ya’akov.
The moshav was one of the first founded in Israel in 1882 as part of the First Aliyah.
It was mainly Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, notably Romania, who were the pioneers, mainly agricultural farmers.
The region was initially cultivated as a wine-growing area under the ownership of Baron Edward de Rothschild whose investment has borne fruit to this day with excellent wines.
Return and Horror
In 1914 Sarah married a wealthy merchant, a pro-Zionist activist, but who preferred to live in Istanbul.
It was an unhappy marriage and Sarah returned to Zichron in 1915.
During her return from Istanbul to Haifa she witnessed the horror of the Armenian Genocide savaged by the Ottoman Empire troops.
She testified to seeing hundreds of men, women, children and babies lying dead around the countryside.
Sick Armenians loaded onto trains and when they died, thrown out and replaced by the living.
On her return to Zichron she vowed to do whatever she could to assist the British to overthrow the bloodthirsty Ottomans from Palestine.
The NILI spy network became highly efficient and considerably helpful to the British Army, but sadly in 1917 the Ottomans managed to locate Sarah Aaronsohn’s carrier pigeon carrying messages to the British Army and managed to decrypt the code of NILI.
They surrounded Zichron and arrested several people, including Sarah and her father.
Her father was tortured in front of her while in captivity and later she was also tortured but gallantly withheld vital information.
The Turks sent her to Damascus for further torturing.
Somehow, after being ruthlessly beaten up, she managed to get permission to return to Zichron for a change of blood-stained clothing.
Once at home, she bravely committed suicide rather than betray the British Army.
She was just 27 years of age.
Sarah’s legacy has been recognised since 1935 with an annual pilgrimage to her tomb in Zichron Ya’akov’s cemetery.
She was the very first example in the history of the Jewish people of a secular, active death of a Jewish-Zionist woman for the nation.
