Zehava joined the “Beitar” movement in Nitra in 1941 after having been expelled from Bratislava. In 1942 she was faced with deportation to Auschwitz but Count Eszterházy, the representative of the Hungarian minority in the Slovak Parliament and a friend of the family, helped her to hide for months and later smuggled her into Budapest.
After the Germans invaded Hungary on 19.3.1944, Zehava worked with the underground mainly distributing forged documents and making contact with the underground activists.
In June 1944 she travelled to Kassa to give forged documents to comrades. In Budapest Zehava was caught twice by the Germans, tortured by the Gestapo but managed to escape. She stayed in hiding places and in bunkers on Hungary Boulevard and in the Budapest Institute of Technology where there was a one and a half meter high bunker between the ceiling of the second storey and the floor of the third storey.
In October 1944 Zehava moved to the “Glass House” on 29, Vadász Street. She caught scarlet fever and was hospitalized. She was rescued in January 1945 by the Red Army. In 1946 Zehava married Tibor Klein – Arie Arieli.
In 1948, after 22 months in Paris, she made aliya. She assisted in the preparation of the vessel “Altalena”
