Haapalah / Aliyah Bet

Martin Hauser served with a tactical RAF intelligence unit, in northern Italy.
He visited his Jewish Brigade comrades and took part in the Seder celebrations.
A few days before the end of the war, Martin saw the first Jewish survivors of the death camps.

On May 8, 1945, Martin Hauser was in Trieste.
He and the men of the Jewish Brigade entered Austria, at the Villach-Klagenfurt area, where they first encountered displaced persons, survivors from Eastern Europe, who were desperately looking for food, clothing, and a way out of Europe.

One week after he arrived in Palestine, Martin Hauser wrote in his diary that his arrival meant so much to him that he was sometimes afraid that he would wake up in the morning and find himself back in
Berlin—all his longings had become reality, hundreds, thousands, even millions would envy him.

Martin Hauser lived in a cellar, which he shared with two other newcomers.
There was no work in his field as a dental technician, nor could he find other permanent work for
months.
Sometimes he slept during the day so that he would not have to pay for lunch.
He got part-time work cleaning shoes, giving Hebrew lessons to children, doing heavy work in great heat on a building site.