Haapalah / Aliyah Bet

In 1936, on a visit to London after graduating, Georg Überall met reperesentatives from Palestine who were interested in the member of the Zionist youth movement in Austria, who
spoke Hebrew, and that was at a turning point in his life.
Georg, who knew Hebrew, his mother having been the head of a Hebrew school in Vienna, was offered a job even before reaching Palestine.

In 1947, David Ben Gurion expanded the Haganah הגנה's arms acquisition system, sending Yehuda Arazi, Ehud Avriel and Munia Mardur abroad to find arms sources and to arrange shipmens to Palestine.
Each of them was given his own budget, and operated independently, reporting directly to David Ben Gurion.

From December, 1947 to March, 1948, Yehuda Arazi, Ehud Avriel and Munia Mardur acquired six ships to transport the arms:
* Santa-Chiara
* Ressurectio
* Maestralle
* Monte-Chiaro
* Scio
* Nora
Each of the ships continued to carry foreign flags, and were operated by their foreign crews.
Ada Sereni, working on Yehuda Arazi's instructions, acquired Santa-Chiara and Ressurectio.

In 1941, on behalf of the Rescue Committee of the Jewish Agency, Zeev Shind, Teddy Kollek and Ehud Avriel were sent to Istanbul to make contact with Jewish communities under Nazi occupation and organize relief and rescue operations in Europe.
Zeev Shind, Moshe Agami and Ehud Avriel, Mossad leAliyah Bet agents in Istanbul, organized sailings from Romania.

Erez Laufer cites: In November, 1939, Ehud Avriel, head of the Hechalutz and Mossad leAliyah Bet envoy in Wien, received permission from Adolf Eichmann, to take 822 Jews from Wien to Bratislava, where they were joined by 130 refugees from Germany and 50 from Gdansk, on the S/S Uranus.
Ehud Überall Avriel, and Moshe Auerbach Agami had established contacts with Nazi officials in Wien and Berlin to arrange transit visas for Maapilim.
In March, 1939, when they applied for 1,000 passports at Adolph Eichmann's Central Office, they were treated like preferred customers; the office proposed issuing a collective passport.

In the winter of 1939, the Danube River was going to freeze over, and the Slovak authorities intended to send the group back to the German border.
Georg Überall and Mosche Agami, the Mossad leAliyah Bet officials in Wien and Geneve, respectively, urged the refugees to continue their trip even though no ship was ready for them at the mouth of the Danube River.

Francis R. Nicosia cites Ehud Avriel charatcerized the attitude of German authorities in Wien as: "In pre-war Germany, these operations were neither illegal nor secret. The Gestapo office directly across the street from our own knew exactly where we where and what we were doing. The illegality began only at the shores of Palestine with the British Blockade."

In 1939, Ehud Avriel אהוד אבריאל, Secretary General of Hechalutz החלוץ‎ and representative of Mossad leAliyah Bet in Wien, made a grave decision to get all remaining HeChalutz החלוץ‎ members in Ostmark out the country, although no vessels were ready to transport them to Palestine from the Danube River delta.

Ehud Avriel worked as Saul Meirov Avigur's assistant in Mossad leAliyah Bet, in Paris.

Ehud Avriel was sent to Istanbul, to accompany Joel Brand to Palestine,

David Ben-Gurion sent Ehud Avriel to Paris to qualify two commercial agents of the Czech Zbrojovka. After that Avriel qualified to meet the people at the top of the Czech Government he was asked to obtain for himself the guise of a sovereign government, such accreditation was bought from Ethiopia at an earlier stage.
On January 10, 1948, the first contract was concluded with General Ludvik Svoboda, Minister of National Defense, which included 200 MG34 machine guns, 4,500 P18 Mauser rifles and 5million rounds of 7.92 mm ammunition, and Jan Masaryk slipped a massage to Ehud Avriel which said: "the more you buy the less will go to the Arabs."
Transport of the first arms and munitions shipment was via a chartered Skymaster airplane, and arrived at Beit Daras בית דראס, on the April 3, 2948, in time to launch Operation Nachshon מבצע נחשון‎.
The next shipment arrived at the end of Apri,l and the next, on the May 25, 1948.
By the end of May, the IDF absorbed 20,000 Czech rifles, 2,800 machine-guns and over 27 million rounds of ammunition.
Two weeks later additional 10,000 rifles, 1,800 machine-guns and 20 million rounds of ammunition arrived.
By October, 1948, the IDF absorbed 46,751 rifles, 6,142 machine-guns, of two types MG34 and ZB37, and 80 million rounds of two types were brought from Czechoslovakia.
When Ehud Avriel found out that the Americans were going to prohibit export of airplanse, he started negotiations with Prague for the acquisition of Avia S.199s, the first of which arrived in Israel on May 21, 1948, on board a Skymaster which landed at Ekron AFB עקרון with a team of Czech technicians.

In 1955, Ehud Avriel was elected to the Knesset on the Mapai list.
On July 31, 1957, he resigned, and was appointed ambassador to Ghana, Liberia and Congo,

Between 1961 and 1965, Ehud Avriel served as Deputy Director-General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs משרד החוץ.

Erez Laufer cites: In November, 1939, Ehud Avriel, head of the Hechalutz and Mossad leAliyah Bet envoy in Wien, received permission from Adolf Eichmann, to take 822 Jews from Wien to Bratislava, where they were joined by 130 refugees from Germany and 50 from Gdansk, on the S/S Uranus.
Ehud Überall Avriel, and Moshe Auerbach Agami had established contacts with Nazi officials in Wien and Berlin to arrange transit visas for Maapilim.
In March, 1939, when they applied for 1,000 passports at Adolph Eichmann's Central Office, they were treated like preferred customers; the office proposed issuing a collective passport.

Ehud Avriel went to Bratislava and bribed the police chief.
S/S Uranus sailed past Budapest, towards Yugoslavia, but had to return to Bratislava, because the Yugoslav authorities refused to let the ship pass throw with a Nazi flag.