Ada Sereni

Ada Sereni was born in 1905 in Rome

Ada Sereni was born Ada Ascarelli in Rome in 1905, to a wealthy Jewish family of Sephardic origin. At high school she met Enzo Sereni, who was already active in the Zionist movement. They married in 1925.

In February 1927 the couple moved to the Land of Israel with their baby daughter Hannah and settled in Rehovot. Life there was hard for her. In June 1928 the family joined the group that founded Givat Brenner, and in the 1930s she joined her husband on missions to Italy, Germany and the United States.

In 1944 Enzo parachuted behind German lines in Italy and contact with him was lost. After the war she went to Italy to learn his fate and found that he had been executed at Dachau in November 1944.

From June 1945 she worked in Italy for the Mossad LeAliyah Bet, first as deputy to Yehuda Arazi and from April 1947 as its head there. She bought ships and organized the departure of tens of thousands of Jewish immigrants from the Italian coast. In 1948 she helped in the operation that sank the arms ship Lino.

After returning to Israel she stayed out of public life. With Yehuda Arazi and Maurizio Vitale she founded the Ramat Aviv Hotel. In 1954 her son Daniel was killed in the Ma'agan disaster, and she died in 1997.