Joseph Goldwasser

Joseph M. Goldwasser was a Americanized Polish Jewish businessman. He is known for leading an unofficial investigation in the lynching of Robert Mallard.

Biography

Joseph Goldwasser was born grew up in Łódź, Poland, in a family of 10 children. In 1938, when he was 19, he fled to Russia by himself after hearing a warning of the occupation of Poland. He spent World War II in Russia, including a year inside a Gulag. After the war, he fled to Uzbekistan.
Goldwasser later moved to Cleveland, Ohio, and married Draza Goldwasser. He ran a tire business called "Trey Packing" in an old synagogue. The synagogue later burnt down, and he remodeled the building into a department store named the Peerless Department Store. He often employed African Americans who moved from the Southern United States. He was a member of the NAACP's Cleveland branch, and launched an unofficial investigation on the lynching of Robert Mallard.
Goldwasser died, at the age of 52 from a heart attack.