[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 147 (Tuesday, September 13, 2022)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E914-E915]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      TRIBUTE TO JOSEPH ALEXANDER

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. ADAM B. SCHIFF

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                      Tuesday, September 13, 2022

  Mr. SCHIFF. Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize Joseph Alexander 
of Los Angeles, California upon his centennial birthday.
  Joseph Alexander was born in 1922 in Kowal, Poland. He and his family 
lived in Kowal until the 1939 Nazi German invasion of Poland when 
Joseph was 16 years old. At the onset of the war, for reasons still 
unknown to Joseph, his family was spared during the initial roundup of 
Jews in their community, and his family was able to escape and join 
other relatives in the town of Blonie. In 1940, Joseph along with his 
parents and five siblings, were transported to the Warsaw Ghetto in 
Poland. It was at this time that Joseph's father bribed some guards to 
allow Joseph and two of his siblings, an older sister and younger 
brother, to escape from Warsaw back to Kowal. This was the last time 
Joseph saw the rest of his family. After three days in Kowal, he was 
taken by train to a labor camp. Over the next six years, Mr. Alexander 
was sent to twelve different concentration camps, including the 
infamous Auschwitz-Birkenau in occupied Poland and Dachau in southern 
Germany.
  Upon arriving in Auschwitz, Mr. Alexander's left forearm was tattooed 
with the number 14284. While captive, he endured forced labor under 
threat of starvation and death--building sewers, a dam, an airport, and 
laying cobblestone streets and railroad tracks. According to Joseph, 
one of the ways he survived was to always try to work at every camp, 
and with the biggest and strongest men, so that he was not grouped with 
the elderly and sick. Following the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Joseph was 
sent back to the Warsaw Ghetto from Auschwitz, to clean up the 
aftermath of the destruction.
  As the Home Army, the Polish underground resistance movement, 
advanced towards Warsaw, Mr. Alexander was sent to concentration camps 
in Germany, and after being moved around several times, ended up at 
Dachau. In 1945, the Allied forces neared the camp, and he was 
subsequently sent on a death march. Due to the impending American 
liberation, the guards abandoned the march, leaving Mr. Alexander and 
the other prisoners to fend for themselves. During this time, Joseph 
and a fellow prisoner managed to survive off a dead horse that they 
found in the snow. Mr. Alexander later recounted that it was ``the best 
meal we'd had in a long time.'' They were found by American troops a 
day later. He immigrated to the United States in 1949, where he married 
and had two children.
  Today, Joseph shares his experiences during the Holocaust with 
students in the Burbank and Glendale Unified School Districts, Woodbury 
University in Burbank, and as a volunteer at the Los Angeles Holocaust 
Museum. Mr. Alexander and other Holocaust survivors

[[Page E915]]

are living examples of a tragic time in our history, reminding us of 
the atrocities committed during the Holocaust, and the dangers of 
allowing fascism and hate to overtake a democratic society.
  I ask all Members of Congress to join me in honoring the centennial 
birthday of this courageous and resilient Holocaust survivor, Joseph 
Alexander.

                          ____________________