In the book Out of the Sky, Matty Friedman reveals one of the strangest episodes of World War II: In 1944, a team of young women and men who survived the Holocaust made the unthinkable choice of skydiving back to Nazi-occupied Europe under the cover of a British military operation.However, at the end of the mission, no Nazi was hurt, no Jew survived, and many paratroopers died. However, the names of some of them, particularly that of twenty-three-year-old Hannah Sensh, the author of the beloved Hebrew song “Eli Eli.” Their story will become one of the founding myths of the young state of Israel, but what exactly is the mission, and what did the paratroopers actually accomplish? What made them heroes?Using thousands of original documents from previously classified files, manuscripts, memos, and unpublished letters, Matty Friedman tracks four paratroopers from the spring of 1944 to the dramatic end of the operation that winter.
In From Heaven, he tells a captivating and astonishing story of a forgotten moment, showing how storytelling can have more power than war. Exploring the line between myth and reality, heroism and absurdity, he makes an argument that resonates in our time.
