Joseph "Joe" Polowsky was born on October 2, 1916. He was the son of Benjamin Polowsky 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. Joseph was married to June Anabelle Larson.

He attended the University of Chicago before being drafted into the U.S. Army’s 69th Infantry Division in December 1941. He belonged to a scouting party which crossed the Elbe in Torgau on April 25, 1945 and met Soviet troops on the other bank. When the Americans and the Soviets saw bodies of German civilians killed by stray artillery fire near the river, the soldiers of both armies swore to do everything to prevent a new war.

In 1946 Polowsky was discharged from the Army. 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. He continued to work as a taxi driver.

In 1959 he met Soviet Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev who visited the United States. A short time later he was invited to visit the Soviet Union where he again met Khrushchev in the Kremlin. Then he visited East Germany and met Walter Ulbricht.

Already ill with cancer, Polowsky held his last vigil on Michigan Avenue Bridge on April 25, 1983. He died in Chicago on October 17, 1983. In his will he asked to be buried in Torgau, and was buried there with military honors on November 26, 1983.

In 1995 a high school in Torgau was named after him. He was memorialized in the Fred Small song "At The Elbe". A new rose variety was dedicated to Joe Polowsky in Torgau in 2006. In Torgau today, a peace run past his burial place and the Polowsky Peace Rose Garden at Torgau’s castle commemorate him.

Source of information: en.wikipedia.org, www.ancestry.com, liberationroute.com