[4] Denied entry by the Poles, he spent a year in a camp on the border at Zbąszyń, before leaving for Rome in later summer 1939 and then to Turkey, and finally Palestine in 1941, where he met his wife-to-be, Margaret ("Macca"), a fellow refugee.
[1][2][4] Wasserstein came to Britain at the end of World War II, in 1946,[5] gaining a BA with first-class honours[5] (1947) and then a PhD (1951) at Birkbeck College, London.
His first academic post was as an Assistant to the Department of Greek under Arnold Gomme at the University of Glasgow in 1951, converted three months later to a lectureship.
He spent most of his time, however, teaching at the University of Tel Aviv as few students in Jerusalem wanted to study Greek.
He worked on manuscripts from the library at Saint Catherine's Monastery on Mount Sinai, and was President of the Classical Association of Israel between 1971 and 1974.