Alessner, Hans

Son of Elsa and Julius. He was born on 28.6.1913 in Vienna, the capital of Austria. In 1938, with the rise of Nazism in Austria, he immigrated to Palestine. At the beginning of World War II he enlisted in the British Army and was assigned to Company 462 of the Transport Corps. He served in Egypt and Lebanon and at the end of April 1943 he went on board the ship “Arinapura” from Egypt to Malta in order to participate in the Allied invasion of Sicily. On the 27th of Nisan 5703 (1.5.1943), a German reconnaissance plane was flying over the convoy of ships headed by the “Aryanpura”. The plane called the bomb planes that had arrived in the evening and bombed the convoy. Hans’s ship suffered direct damage and was downed. One hundred and forty members of Company 462 drowned in the disaster.