Joseph Goldwasser

Joseph Goldwasser (c. 1919 – c. 1971) 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 c. 1919 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". Goldwasser 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 c. 1971, at the age of 52 from a heart attack.