Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on April 20, 2024

Dozens of FBI agents in L.A. learned what happens when anti-Semitism gets out of control as 101-year-old Holocaust survivor Joe Alexander told them his story Wednesday.

KNX News' Emily Valdez reports - Alexander was 16 years old when the Nazis invaded Poland in 1938. His family was forced to live in the Warsaw Ghetto, and he was sent to work camps and death camps.

During the Holocaust, Alexander spent six years across 12 concentration camps, including Auschwitz, and during that time, he saw unthinkable things.

"I saw people running to the electric fence to get electrocuted. I saw people being beaten to death because they gave up," Alexander recalled.

But he said the camps were only part of the story, pointing out that 30-40% of people wouldn't survive the long, cramped, foodless, waterless train rides.

So, how did Alexander manage to make it? "I lost my family. I lost five siblings, my parents, hundreds of cousins, and aunts and uncles. So I said I have to survive," he said.

Alexander recounted one instance that required him to make a split-second life-or-death decision when he and other Auschwitz captives were being sorted in two lines - one for work detail, the other destined for the gas chambers.

Alexander was marching toward certain death, but when the infamous Nazi Josef Mengele turned his back, Alexander snuck into the line for people being sent to work.

According to Alexander, the one factor that truly allowed him to survive was help from others. "The only way I survived was with the help of other people," he said. "In all the jobs you did, you worked with civilians, and you can manage to survive if you manage to get a little extra food; that's the only way you could survive."

Alexander said, "I have to talk for 6 million who can't talk," so he spends his time giving talks, primarily to children in schools, 70% of whom he says have never even heard of the Holocaust.

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101-year-old Holocaust survivor is speaking for the 6 million who no longer can - Audacy

Category: Holocaust
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