Joseph Polowsky

[1] Polowsky was the youngest son of Jewish immigrants who had immigrated from the Kiev area in the Russian Empire to the United States and worked first as a conductor and bus driver for the Chicago Transit Authority, then as a taxi driver for the Checker Cab Company in Chicago.

He belonged to a scouting party which crossed the Elbe in Torgau on April 25, 1945, and met Soviet troops on the other bank.

The Americans and the Soviets saw bodies of German civilians killed by stray artillery fire near the river.

Back in the U.S., he unsuccessfully asked the United Nations to declare 25 April a World Day of Peace.

Each year he commemorated the Elbe Day on the Michigan Avenue Bridge in Chicago and held a vigil.