Haviva Reik

Who was Haviva Reik?

Haviva Reik was one of 32 or 33 Palestinian Jewish parachutists sent by the Jewish Agency and Britain's Special Operations Executive on military missions in Nazi-occupied Europe. Reik went to Slovakia in fall 1944 and worked with local Jewish people to resist the German occupation there. She established a camp for Russian prisoners of war who had escaped, and helped organize a Jewish resistance unit. The Germans organized forces to put down the Jewish resistance, and Reik and the other parachutists escaped with about 40 local Jews into the mountains. In November 1944, however, Reik and the other parachutists were captured, killed, and buried in a mass grave.