The "Mataroa"' was the first ship that brought Holocaust survivors to Palestine after World War II. Most of its passengers were children: a few hundred survivors of the Buchenwald Camp (one of them was Yizrael Lau, future Chief Rabbi of Israel), and children that were hidden in France and Switzerland. The trip was the fruit of a joint effort of the Mossad for Aliya Bet and the American Army.The ship arraived at the shores of Palestine on September 9th, 1945. The survivors were brought to the Atlit camp near Haifa Bay.