In 1957, representatives came from Israel to the youth movement, and there Hanna learned about the need for young people to come and live and work in Israel. She then decided to join. Since the minimum age at which a person was allowed to leave home was 21, Hanna asked her father to give her permission to leave the home where she grew up at age 20 and join the farmers in Israel. Hanna sewed clothes for herself at her workplace so that she would have clothes when she traveled to Toulouse to join the agricultural training for young people.
From early 1957, Hanna participated in a Zionist agricultural training program (Hachshara) at the farm La Barte-sur-Laize, near Toulouse, southern France — organized by the Ihud Habonim youth movement. The training lasted about a year and a half. During it, she learned to wake up at 3 in the morning to milk cows, to work in the field and pick potatoes and carrots, and to load bales of hay onto a truck.
It was there that she met Meir Ben Ichay (known as 'Papi') for the first time. When she first saw him, she said to her friends: 'Let's laugh at the new guy who just arrived.' Later, they fell in love and became a couple.
Before making Aliya, in 1958, Hanna brought Meir to a family meeting with her father and her aunt in Paris, so they could meet her new partner. The meeting was part of a hitchhiking journey from Toulouse to Brussels — that year, an international exhibition was held there, and Hanna and Meir traveled to visit it.
In February 1959, aged 21, Hanna immigrated to Israel together with Meir. They were already a couple, and traveled together on the luxury ship SS Theodore Herzl.