Home > World War I > Sarah Aaronsohn Biography

1890
Zikhron Ya'akov, Palestine
October 9, 1917
Zikhron Ya'akov, Palestine

Spy

Sarah Aaronsohn's story is one of personal courage and risk to further a cause. A Jewish woman who lived in Palestine thirty years before the state of Israel was founded, Aaronsohn risked her own safety to work as an intelligence agent (spy) during World War I. She helped provide vital war information to the British, in the hopes that the British would defeat the Ottoman Turks who ruled Palestine and help the Jewish people establish a homeland there. Though she died violently as a result of her efforts, her work helped save the lives of many British soldiers. She is honored as a hero in Israel and by many Jews around the world.

Child of Refugees

Sarah Aaronsohn's Jewish parents, Ephraim and Malkah, went to Palestine in 1882 as refugees from Romania. Since the first century C. E.,...