Born January 29, 1920   |   Mukachevo (Munkacs), Czechoslovakia (now Mukacheve, Ukraine)

Died November 29, 1980   |   Edmonton, Canada

He loved to holiday in the Rockies because they reminded him of the good times in his childhood home near the Carpathian Mountains.

Alexander spent his early years in the largely Jewish town of Mukachevo with his parents and two brothers. Trained as an upholsterer, he worked as a policeman for a time, but his passion was playing the accordion in a band and teaching ballroom dancing. Following the Nazi occupation, Alexander was pressed into forced labour, performing dangerous underwater bridge work, a task made even more perilous without diving equipment. After a daring escape, he found refuge in a monastery, thanks to the compassion of a sympathetic Catholic priest.

Following liberation, Alexander went home to search for family but learned that he and his brother Yenu were the only survivors in their family. He then searched for his pre-war girlfriend Helen, formerly a student in his dancing class, who was also looking for him. Joyously reunited, they were married on November 30, 1945. Their first son, Sol, was born in the Heidenheim Displaced Persons Camp in Germany. After living in Amsterdam for four years, the family immigrated to Canada in 1951, settling in Edmonton, where they welcomed two more children, Eli and Gail. While working as an upholsterer at Canadian Bedding, Alexander got to know Holocaust survivor Nate Alterman. They became partners in a factory of their own—Craft Built Furniture—where their friends often gathered to kibitz (chat) and play pinochle. Handsome, kind and the life of every party, Alex continued to dance with his beloved Helen until his untimely death in 1980. He had lived just long enough to excitedly welcome their first grandchild. Today his legacy includes three more grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.