Joe Engel was and remains an icon in Charleston, South Carolina. Born in Zakroczym, Poland, he survived Auschwitz and several other concentration camps and fought with the resistance before landing on American shores as a refugee in 1949.
After retirement from his dry-cleaning business, Engel focused his later years on Holocaust education. As part of these efforts, he took to sitting on downtown park benches wearing a name tag that read “Joe Engel, Holocaust Survivor: Ask me questions” – becoming the city’s first public memorial to the victims of Nazi genocide. Knowing he would not be here to impart his message forever, Engel and his friend and fellow survivor Pincus Kolender led a drive to install the permanent memorial that now stands in Charleston’s Marion Square park.
