HUNTINGTON BEACH : A Man Who Sought U.S., Soviet Peace

Every April 25th, Irene Polowsky Rounds says a quiet prayer for her father--one man, who in his own way, tried to change the world.

As a child in Chicago, she remembers, the date was a time when her father would do things that, at the time, embarrassed her.

“He would stand on the Michigan Avenue bridge with peace signs on April 25,” Rounds said. “My teen-age friends thought he was eccentric.”

Now 33 and a registered nurse living in this coastal community, Rounds today will mark April 25 with warm, admiring thoughts of her late father, Joseph Polowsky.

“I remember him,” she said, “and I say a prayer.

“And I know his wish has come true by his burial. He is buried by the Elbe River in a beautiful grave site, and there’s a celebration there every year honoring him. He’ll always be remembered.”

Joseph Polowsky, whose Jewish parents immigrated to Chicago from Czarist Russia, died of cancer in 1983 at the age of 67. The New York Times, in its obituary, described him as “a Chicago taxi driver who led virtually a one-man campaign to build friendship between the United States and the Soviet Union and revive ‘the spirit of the Elbe.’ ”

As a young man, Polowsky was among the American GIs in World War II who on April 25, 1945, first linked up with Russian troops on the Elbe River as the allies fought their way into Nazi Germany.

In a Chicago interview just before his death, he said that both Americans and Russians were greatly touched by their historic linkup.

“Those of us there swore an oath that we would never forget one another and that we would dedicate our lives to furthering friendship between our countries so that such a thing (war) would never happen again,” he declared.

Polowsky steadfastly kept that oath. For the rest of his life, he worked to improve Soviet-American relations.

“He was just a blue-collar worker--he had jobs as a bus driver and as a taxi driver--but he managed to take trips to the United Nations (in New York) and to Russia,” Rounds said in an interview on Wednesday.

Polowsky’s peace efforts made him internationally prominent--and controversial. U.S.-Soviet relations quickly chilled after World War II. The Cold War began and became a time when the two super powers bristled with an arms buildup.

Rounds looks back on the Cold War as a particularly difficult time for her family. People accused Polowsky of being “a communist sympathizer,” and the family faced persistent financial problems, Rounds said.

“My father’s money was going for things like trips to the United Nations,” Rounds said. “My mother, who’s a nurse, was the real breadwinner. My father’s peace work meant financial burdens. There was no money for things like a vacation or a house of our own.”

Rounds’ family album contains many newspaper photos and clippings about her father. Perhaps the most poignant are those in 1983, shortly before Polowsky’s death. Having been found to have terminal cancer, Polowsky went public with his wish to be buried in what was then communist East Germany, at the village of Torgau, where the 1945 Elbe River linkup occurred.

Polowsky told Chicago newspapers about his dying wish. After his death, private donations enabled the family to ship Polowsky’s body to East Germany; the burial beside the Elbe was covered by the media. Because of the family’s modest finances, only one person, Rounds’ brother, Ted, was able to attend the burial.

“My husband, Russ, and I were going to fly to Germany this year to see my father’s grave, but we decided against it after war broke out in the Persian Gulf,” Rounds said. “Next year, we are definitely going there.”

Her unusual childhood, Rounds said, made it difficult at times to understand her father and his “peace project.”

“But even when I was young, I had a gut feeling that what my father was doing was very important. Even though I didn’t know what it was all about, I knew it was for the benefit of mankind.”