Reik, Ḥavivah
REIK, ḤAVIVAH
REIK, ḤAVIVAH (Emma ; 1914–1944), one of four *Haganah envoys from Palestine parachuted into Slovakia during World War ii. Ḥavivah Reik was born into a working-class family in a small Slovak village near *Banská Bystrica. She settled in Palestine in 1939, joining the Ha-Shomer ha-Ẓa'ir kibbutz Ma'anit. During the critical days of the war she volunteered to be parachuted into Slovakia. She was to reach Bratislava and establish contact with the "Working Group" (see Gisi *Fleischmann) but arrived too late. In mid-September 1944, she reached Banská Bystrica, where she assisted the Jewish remnant that had gathered there. On October 28, when Banská Bystrica (the center of the Slovak uprising) fell, she retreated into the mountains along with a group of Jewish fighters. Captured by Germans a week later, she was imprisoned and executed on November 20, 1944, in Kremnička. Kibbutz Lahavot Ḥavivah, the Israel freighter Ḥavivah Reik, and the research and educational center Givat Ḥavivah in Israel were named in her memory.
bibliography:
D. and P. Bar-Adon, Seven who Fell (1947), 141–9.
[Livia Rothkirchen]