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At a Gestapo prison in Budapest in 1944, Susan Beer was initially confused when she saw a fellow prisoner wearing military fatigues and making hand signals through her cell window, indicating that she would be hanged.

When prisoners were allowed to walk out of their cells, Beer found out she was communicating with Hannah Senesh, a paratrooper who returned to her native Hungary that year on a mission to free the country's Jews. Rather than being hanged, Senesh was first tortured and then executed by a firing squad. Even though her fate was a "hopeless case," Senesh "had the strength to be encouraging" when she spoke with other prisoners, Beer recalled.

An 85-year-old Englewood resident, Beer will speak April 29 at the JCC of Central New Jersey's Jewish Film Festival Spring Mini Series after the screening of the documentary "Blessed is the Match: The Life & Death of Hannah Senesh." During the first night of the festival April 8, the JCC will screen "A Matter of Size," a comedy about four overweight friends living in Israel who discover the world of sumo wrestling.

"She knew, more or less, that her life might end," Beer said of Senesh in an interview with The Jewish State. "She tried to be very encouraging and didn't have a said outlook, which was very helpful to all of us."

In a scene in "Blessed is the Match," directed by Roberta Grossman, Beer is depicted asking Senesh about her missing front teeth, with Senesh lying that her teeth weren't taken out in the prison.

"She didn't want me to feel that this would happen to me," Beer said.

Senesh was a poet and a diarist before she became a Zionist through Maccabea, the most established Zionist student organization in Hungary, and moved to British Palestine shortly after the outbreak of World War II in Europe. She joined Kibbutz Sdot Yam and in 1943 enlisted in the British army, training in Egypt as a paratrooper before her 1944 mission.

"The whole idea of coming back [to Hungary] was to help her mother to get out, and many others," Beer said.

Born in Slovakia, Beer and her mother were refugees in Hungary for two years before being arrested. After one month in the Budapest prison, Beer and her mother were sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp, and after the war Susan was reunited with her father in Budapest, where she finished her high school studies and spent two years in medical school in Bratislava. Before she could finish school, Beer moved to the U.S., where she lived in Cleveland for 50 years before coming to New Jersey.

Beer said she has seen "Blessed is the Match" six times now, and while it's not easy to speak about the Holocaust, she keeps doing so after screenings of the film to teach that "what people take for granted is just the freedom of walking, of reading, of doing what you feel like doing."

"These are all things that are special," Beer said.

Though Beer only knew Senesh for a month, she said the heroine's courage made a lasting impression.

"I was with her a brief time, but her memory remained with me, the way she was, for the rest of my life," Beer said.

On April 8, the JCC will screen "A Matter of Size" at 7:30 p.m. at the AMC Loews Theatre, 1021 Route 22 in Mountainside. "Blessed is the Match," followed by Beer's speech, will be screened at the same location at 7:30 p.m. April 29. "A Matter of Size," directed by Sharon Maymon and Erez Tadmor, was nominated for 13 Israeli Academy Awards and won three.

Tickets for the festival are $12 per night in advance for JCC members, seniors age 65 and over, and students, and $14 for the community. At the door, tickets are $15. Advance ticket purchase is strongly recommended as screenings often sell out. Tickets can be purchased online at www.jccnj.org, by mail or in person at the JCC, 1391 Martine Ave. in Scotch Plains.

For more information, go to www.jccnj.org or call the Jewish Film Festival Hotline at (908) 889-8800 ext. 208.