Joseph Alexander was born in November 1922 in Kowal, Poland. He had a good life there until 1939. They belonged to Jewish organizations and had a lot of fun. In 1939, everything stopped. The town was small and very regular. Most business was in the town square, and they lived there. The population was 6,000 with 1,500 being Jews. Being Jewish was being like anybody else. He went to public school and then to Jewish school in the afternoons. He had three sisters and two brothers. He is the only survivor. The family was all killed by the Nazis. Before 1939, he had no plans. He was 16 and did not think about what he was going to do. Europe is different than America. You did not plan for things. It is a different situation there. His father was a tailor and ran a big store. They manufactured most of their merchandise and clothes for men and children from five to 16 years old. Alexander worked after school when he could.

In 1939, the Germans came into Poland and divided it into two parts. One was annexed by Germany and the other was Poland under German occupation. Joseph Alexander and his family lived in the annexed part. They then had to wear the yellow star [Annotator's Note: Jewish badges, Judenstern, worn on the clothes of Jews in Nazi Germany]. After a few weeks, they came to the town square where his family lived. His uncle lived in a house there too. The Germans went after his uncle and told all the people they had ten minutes to get their possessions and meet in the town square. The people were taken away. He does not know why his and two other houses were left alone. His father said they were not going to wait for them to come back. His father's sisters lived near Warsaw [Annotator's Note: Warsaw, Poland] which was under German occupation and their lives were almost normal. They got a wagon and took as much as they could from their store and house. They moved to Błonie [Annotator's Note: Błonie, Poland] near Warsaw. Everybody there was still in business. They were there for a few weeks and then Alexander was told to go to a work camp. He worked during the week and had weekends home. Near the end of October [Annotator's Note: October 1939] and the beginning of November [Annotator's Note: November 1939], he was building a canal and got blood poisoning. He went home and did not go back. The police came to look for him and his father said he was not here. Alexander stayed away for a few weeks. This was about the time the walls were being built for the Warsaw Ghetto. All Jews within 50 to 60 kilometers of Warsaw were ordered to move into the ghetto. The ghetto was small and contained about 265,000 people. Life was miserable.

Joseph Alexander and his family lived with another family in the Warsaw Ghetto [Annotator's Note: in Warsaw, Poland]. It was a nice apartment actually, but people were dying every day. There were dead people in the streets. He lived there for over four months. He found out that nothing had changed in their hometown [Annotator's Note: Kowal, Poland]. His parents decided for his older sister, one younger brother, and Alexander to go back home. They had to pay off the guard at the gate to get out. They took different streets and were to meet outside of town. A Polish teenager told Alexander to give him money or he would report him. Alexander did and kept walking. The teenager approached him again and then Alexander took a different street. He met his sister and brother, and they went home. That lasted for three days. All the men from 16 to 60 were then told to report to the schoolhouse. The businesspeople were gone, and the stores were closed. He reported in and went to the camps. At the first camp, they built a dam. It was hard work. They got one piece of bread and coffee in the morning. When they returned from work, they got soup that was either potato peels or spinach. They could not survive on that food. There were a lot of subcamps around the city. People were dying every day. Camps started being combined into one. He was moved from camp to camp and was in 12 camps altogether. He laid cobblestones, he built sewers, he did roofing, built an airport, and laid railroad tracks. He was put on a train and did not know where he was going. He was in a cattle car with about 40 to 50 people. The trip took three days with no food, water, or facilities. You walked on dead people in the cattle car and only though about survival. After three days, he arrived at Auschwitz [Annotator's Note: Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp complex in German occupied Oswiecim, Poland], one of the biggest death camps.

Joseph Alexander arrived in Auschwitz [Annotator's Note: Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp complex in German occupied Oswiecim, Poland]. About 30 to 40 percent of his fellow travelers were dead on the train. Later on, the trains went to directly into the camp, but in 1943, they did not. They stopped downtown six kilometers from the camp. The ones alive were lined up in rows of five. He met Josef Mengele [Annotator's Note: SS-Hauptsturmführer, or Captain, Doctor Josef Mengele] then, the Doctor of Death. He selected people to go to the left who would be taken to the camp on trucks. He picked out Alexander with the sick and old. Alexander had been in several work camps already and always tried to get in with the strongest and biggest men because he was a little guy. His luck was that it was after midnight. When Mengele moved further down, Alexander moved back to the other side. If he had not done that, he would not be telling this story. The next morning they found out that the people on the trucks went straight to the gas chamber. Alexander walked to Auschwitz and got a shower and was tattooed with a number [Annotator's Note: that he shows to the interviewer]. He was later in Birkenau [Annotator's Note: Auschwitz II-Birkenau in Brzesinka, Poland] and saw Mengele two more times. There were several times they wanted people to go out and work. He and his friends did not trust that, so they hid. That was the time of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising [Annotator's Note: act of Jewish resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto in German-occupied Poland, 19 April to 16 May 1943]. Before that, they needed tailors. Alexander reported but was told they had enough. After that, was the uprising and a big transport was needed. The only took Hungarian, Greek, and Italian, and a few Polish Jews. They took a train for three days without food or water in a cattle car back to the Warsaw Ghetto. There was nothing left, and the buildings were burned out. They were made to clean them up and stack the bricks. They had to build some buildings. They had no facilities. His shirt was eaten up by lice and shredded. One day he got to take a shower and got fresh clothes. They found a lot of good household goods. Polish people came in to take bricks to the railroad station and they brought food in. One night, the Polish underground [Annotator's Note: Polish resistance movement of World War 2] tried to free the camp but were unsuccessful. The next morning, they were taken out and were taken out of the city. Around dusk, they were put in a big field. The ground was moist. They squeezed mud through their shirt to get water. The next morning they marched to another town where there was river. Two people went too far into the water and were shot and killed. At the next town, only 100 people at a time were allowed to go to the river. It began to rain heavily. They arrived at a railroad station and got on a train the next morning to Germany to Dachau [Annotator's Note: Dachau concentration camp complex near Dachau, Germany].

Joseph Alexander arrived in Dachau [Annotator's Note: Dachau concentration camp complex near Dachau, Germany] and about half of the people were dead [Annotator's Note: who had traveled with him on the train there]. For about two weeks, he did nothing. There were 12 camps within the area. He went to camp number one digging potatoes for a farmer. He then went to camp number seven in Landsberg [Annotator's Note: subcamp of Dachau Concentration Camp in Landsberg am Lech, Germany]. That was a small camp with about 150 people. A small group of them were already in the camps for four years so they got the better jobs. There were women in the camp, but they were closed off. They did work together. Alexander got a group of five boys and five girls who worked outside the gate in the German kitchen for the guards. Regular German Army worked there and were very good to him. Each night he took food back for his friends in the camp. A couple of times, the officers complained he was holding up the people going to work. The guards who worked with him told him to not worry about it. On 28 April [Annotator's Note: 28 April 1945] all of the subcamps went back to Dachau. The next morning they left on a death march to Garmisch [Annotator's Note: Garmisch, Germany] where they were to be killed. After two days, they could hear the fighting and knew the American troops were not far behind. Planes were coming over and bombing the cities. They came to a blown-up bridge at a village where they were taken into the forest. Volunteers were asked to take the sick people to barns. On the way back, a friend of Alexander found a dead horse in the snow. They cut off a piece of meat. Alexander made a fire and cooked it. It was the best meal they had in a long time. The guards disappeared during the night. The German police came and took them into the village and then they disappeared. They all just walked around the village until between 12 and one o'clock when an American tank moved in and liberated them [Annotator's Note: on 27 April 1945]. There were nine of them who had been in the camps for over five years. They started to walk to the next town and came to a German bakery and got bread. They came to Bartleshalde [Annotator's Note: Bartleshalde, Germany] and saw three American soldiers who were so drunk they could not walk. The soldiers asked them if they were Polish and then took them into an underground bunker. They changed clothes, got food, and got bicycles. The city was made a DP [Annotator's Note: displaced persons] camp, but Alexander and his friends did not want to go in it. They hopped the fences and went to a German inn that had been taken over by the Americans. After about ten days, they were ordered into the camp. Then they were taken to Munich [Annotator's Note: Munich, Germany] to another DP camp, but they were free.

Joseph Alexander and some friends lived in a DP [Annotator's Note: displaced persons] camp in Munich [Annotator's Note: Munich, Germany] for a few days. He and a friend then decided that they would return to camp number seven at Landsberg [Annotator's Note: subcamp of Dachau Concentration Camp in Landsberg am Lech, Germany] which had become one of the biggest DP camps in Germany. They went and registered even though they did not want to live in the camp. They registered at camp to camp to see if anyone they knew had survived. Alexander went and lived in a farmhouse for about six weeks before going back to Poland to see if anybody survived. In his house, there were survivors but no one of his family other than one cousin. The two of them had been separated at Auschwitz [Annotator's Note: Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp complex in German occupied Oswiecim, Poland] by Doctor Mengele [Annotator's Note: SS-Hauptsturmführer, or Captain, Doctor Josef Mengele]. The Polish people were killing survivors who came back because they had moved into their houses. Alexander went to get his cousin and go back to Germany. He met a woman survivor and told her what he was doing. She begged him to wait for ten days so she could go with him. When they got to the border of Czechoslovakia and Poland. Czechoslovakia was occupied by the Russians. He then got on a train to the German border. A Russian officer told him he had to go back to Prague [Annotator's Note: Prague, Czechoslovakia; now Prague, Czech Republic] to get a stamp. There was no government there. He then decided to go to Austria. The Russians there took his papers and put them up for three days. They were trying to send people to their country of birth. His papers said the woman was his sister, but she did not know that. She and Alexander gave different answers to the questions they were asked but he talked his way on to the list to go to Germany. He went to the Austrian border the next morning and then into Vienna [Annotator's Note: Vienna, Austria]. To get Germany, you had to go into the American side of Vienna. He crossed the river on boats to get there and then made it back to Germany.

After making it into Germany [Annotator's Note: after being liberated from the Landsberg subcamp of Dachau Concentration Camp in Landsberg am Lech, Germany in April 1945], Joseph Alexander stayed for four years. He did not have a passport and could not go anywhere. He worked in the black market. There was nothing else he could do. He was liberated, in a strange country, no family, and 21 years old. He made a good life. He lived in a village and bought eggs, chicken, and butter and would take them into the DP [Annotator's Note: displaced persons] camp to sell. It kept progressing and he and a friend did a lot of things. They sold gasoline. American troops would come to his apartment for French cognac [Annotator's Note: type of alcoholic beverage]. After four years, Canada started taking people in. He registered. It took a long time to hear anything. A friend of his lived in New Orleans [Annotator's Note: New Orleans, Louisiana] who told him to go to Munich [Annotator's Note: Munich, Germany] and register. He did that and got a notice to go to the American doctor and FBI [Annotator's Note: United States Federal Bureau of Investigation]. He then went to Bremerhaven [Annotator's Note: Bremerhaven, Germany], got on a ship, and arrived in the United States on 30 May 1949. He was sponsored by a Jewish organization in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania where he lived for about six months. A cousin who survived came in October [Annotator's Note: October 1949] to an uncle's homes in Santa Monica [Annotator's Note: Santa Monica, California]. They were the only two survivors, so Alexander moved to Los Angeles [Annotator's Note: Los Angeles, California] in January 1950. He changed his first name but kept his last name. His first name was Idel, and he did not like it. When he became a citizen, he took his brother's name of Joseph.

Joseph Alexander went through searches with American Red Cross [Annotator's Note: Red Cross, an international non-profit humanitarian organization] for months trying to find out what happened [Annotator's Note: to his immediate family who were all killed in Nazi concentration camps] but came up with nothing. The only thing he knows that his younger brother, who was 12, was taken to Lodz Ghetto [Annotator's Note: Łódź Ghetto or Litzmannstadt Ghetto in Łódź, Poland] from a letter from his sister. He could not find out anything else. His sister did not write much. She was working at the post office in the ghetto. Alexander tried to stay away [Annotator's Note: from things that would get him in trouble in the concentration and work camps]. He witnessed people being beaten to death, people running into electric fences to electrocute themselves, and people being hanged. He stayed away from anyone laying a hand on him. He never lost hope. He talks to schools and is asked if he ever thought of giving up. He never gave up hope, even if he had a bad day. He has told this to tens of thousands of kids. He has over 800 letters from the kids. The experience did not affect his faith. He is still active in his synagogue. It made his faith stronger. He is asked by people how he survived 12 camps. He answers them that it was not up to him, but up to the man upstairs [Annotator's Note: a term for God]. He was allowed to survive so he could tell his story, so that is what he is doing.

In 2015, Joseph Alexander was invited by the German government to help celebrate the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Dachau [Annotator's Note: Dachau concentration camp complex near Dachau, Germany]. They celebrated for five days. He spoke with the Chancellor of Germany [Annotator's Note: Angela Merkel] who was friendly. He has another invitation for the 75th anniversary. He has gone back to Dachau and Auschwitz [Annotator's Note: Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp complex in German occupied Oswiecim, Poland]. People there asked him why he came back, and he answered them that it was because he survived, and Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler] did not. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Alexander his thoughts about the rise of anti-Semitism in the United States, such as the shooting in Pittsburgh.] When he talks to the kids in schools, he tells them there are a lot of Holocaust [Annotator's Note: also called the Shoah; the genocide of European Jews during World War 2] deniers. They are crazy. The evidence is still in existence. If you got to the camps, the ovens are still there. He tells them that they are listening to someone who survived it. It is very important to tell the future generations about it, so that it does not happen again. Alexander is going to a school named after Daniel Pearl [Annotator's Note: American journalist], who was decapitated [Annotator's Note: by terrorists on 1 February 2002], to talk about the Holocaust and anti-Semitism. It was not easy for him to tell of his experience the first time. He does not use a script. A friend of his belongs to a club called the Exchange Club that meets for lunch weekly. He asked Alexander to come and speak to him. That was his first time. A neighbor of Alexander's teaches at a synagogue, and she asked him to talk. Then somebody from the Museum [Annotator's Note: The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana] asked him to talk there. He does not relive his experiences and does not have dreams about it. He does think about it all the time. He does not hate the Germans. He does not carry hate, but he does not forget. It is a different Germany today. He met some young people in Dachau who do not talk to their families because they ask them questions and do not get answers. He just carries on and tries to tell as many young people as he can. That is important and that is what he is doing.