Alex W. Harris Condolences

It is with great sadness that General Tours World Traveler experienced the recent passing of its Founder and Chairman Emeritus, Alex Harris. Born in September 1921, his remarkable life traced many of the most significant events of the 20^th century. As a young man in Poland, he lost two generations of his family in the Holocaust. Arrested in Russian-occupied eastern Poland and sent to a Siberian Gulag, he and other Polish citizens were subsequently released and conscripted into the Second Polish Army to fight the Nazis. The end of the Second World War found Mr. Harris in a displaced person’s camp in Eschwege, Germany outside of Dresden. Given the chance to immigrate to the United States, he came to New York where he founded General Tours in 1947.

Mr. Harris will be fondly remembered by family, friends and colleagues as a brilliant pioneer of the modern American tourism industry. In 1954, after requesting special permission from the U.S. State Department and Eisenhower Administration, Mr. Harris was granted the authority to operate the first scheduled tours to the Soviet Union for American travelers. He expanded General Tours into a thriving worldwide travel company and continued to innovate, helping to develop the United States Tour Operators Association into the industry’s preeminent trade and marketing association. Mr. Harris was inducted into the ASTA Hall of Fame in 1992 and received the Ellis Island Medal of Honor in 2005; over the decades he received widespread recognition from his peers for his vision and success and was the recipient of numerous other awards. Alex Harris was a true icon of the travel industry.

He is survived by his wife, Judy McDaniel Harris. A celebration of Mr. Harris’ life took place on February 15, 2013.  Please submit your condolences below.
 

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