Sarah Aaronsohn

Sarah Aaronsohn (Hebrew: שרה אהרנסון, 5 January 1890 – 9 October 1917) was a member of Nili, a ring of Jewish spies working for the British in World War I, and a sister of agronomist Aaron Aaronsohn. She is often referred to as the "heroine of Nili."

Biography

Sarah Aaronsohn was born in Zichron Yaakov, which at the time was part of Ottoman Syria. Her parents were Zionists from Romania who had come to Ottoman Palestine as some of the first settlers of the First Aliyah and were founders of the moshava where Aaronsohn was born. Encouraged by her brother Aaron, she studied languages and was fluent in Hebrew, Yiddish, Turkish and French, had reasonable command of Arabic and taught herself English. On 31 March 1914, she was married in Atlit to Haim Abraham, an affluent merchant from Bulgaria, and Zionist activist and lived briefly with him in Istanbul; but the marriage was an unhappy one and she returned home to Zichron Yaakov in December 1915.

On her way from Istanbul to Haifa, Aaronsohn witnessed part of the Armenian genocide. She testified to seeing hundreds of bodies of Armenian men, women, children, and babies; sick Armenians being loaded onto trains; with the dead being tossed out and replaced by the living. After her trip to Haifa, any allusions to Armenians upset her greatly. According to Chaim Herzog, Aaronsohn decided to assist British forces as a result of what she had witnessed.