Aleksander Gluck was born on February 7, 1920 in Visne Reviste, Slovakia. Because of strong anti-Semitism from the Slovaks in his rural community, he dropped out of school at the age of ten. Backed by the Nazis, Slovaks of his own community stripped his family of their property and rights as citizens. Alex saved himself by volunteering for a labor battalion. He suffered a hernia and was taken to Bratislava, where he was well treated by the doctors and nurses of a Jewish hospital from 1941 to 1943. Because the food and conditions were so much better, Alex kept re-opening his wound and prolonged his hospital stay to seven weeks. When he was returned to a labor camp, he worked quickly with help from friendly outsiders to create false papers and a new identity, Antwon Blazack.
After his escape, he was helped and concealed for many months on a farm and in a rural home by the local women. He made his way first to Michalovce and finally to his sister’s home in Uzhgorod in January 1944, which put him on the Hungarian side of the border. He discovered and joined a Jewish underground organization in Budapest (with which Raoul Wallenberg was associated), which created and distributed false papers (identity papers, birth certificates, etc.) to those needing them.
Alex estimated that his organization processed over 500,000 false papers, and that he personally saved lives of at least 500 Jews. After the close of the war, he returned for a time to Slovakia. He and his brother, Morris, with the help of his uncle, Joe Rosenfeld, who lived in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and his eldest brother, Bernard, immigrated to the United States in 1948. Of his original family of ten, only three survived the Holocaust – Edith (Kallman), Morris, and Alex. Alex married Doris Goldstein of New York City in 1957 and had three children – Ernest, Brion, and Gail.
Connecting Stories: Edith Kallman