His father was a prominent physician who counted many well-known actors, artists, and scientists, including Albert Einstein, among his friends and patients.
[2] In 1936, after being tipped off that he was on a Gestapo arrest list, Alfred remained in London where he was visiting a daughter, and managed to help the rest of his family emigrate to England via Switzerland.
He managed to join the Royal Pioneer Corps as a private in 1940, attended officer training in 1943, and in 1945 was an interpreter at interrogations of guards and staff at the newly liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
[2] "Gripped by a righteous anger,"[4] and having learned that Rudolf Höss, the former Auschwitz Kommandant, had gone into hiding, Alexander asked his superiors for permission to track down fugitive war crimes suspects, but was denied.
Alexander arrested Rudolf Höss on 11 March 1946 in Gottrupel (Germany), where he lived disguised as a gardener and called himself Franz Lang.