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LEFT: Elijah shows his grandfather the suit he will wear for his bar mitzvah. RIGHT: Bill shows 13-year-old Elijah how to start the tractor. FACING PAGE: Grandfather and grandson share a moment. 

jews d
in 
the

disease, hunger and inhumane treat-
ment under Nazi rule. Although Bill was 
raised in an Orthodox home, attending 
cheder as a youngster, his 13th year came 
and went, the idea of proclaiming his 
status as an adult in the Jewish commu-
nity now only an impossible dream.

SURVIVING THE DEATH CAMPS
The family remained in the ghetto until 
1944, when liquidation forced them to 
Auschwitz. Bill recalled being a 16-year-
old traveling in a grossly overcrowded 
freight car — still with his family — and 
nearly suffocating from lack of air. 
Upon arrival at the death camp, Bill’
s 
mother was separated from her husband 
and children and sent to Bergen-Belsen, 
where she was presumed lost. Bill 
explained he thought he, too, would per-
ish at Auschwitz. “It was almost a natural 
conclusion, to think you’
d be killed, that 
you had no choice but to die.
”
Then, in January of 1945, Bill, his 
father and brother were transported to 
Buchenwald. “My father got sick there 
and was taken to a hospital, where he 
was killed,
” he recalled, his bright blue 
eyes dimming with emotion.
While in the camp, Bill was saved 
by an uncle who was already there by 
being chosen to work in a labor camp.
“He told me to say I was an electri-
cian so I would be selected for work,” 
he explained.
The ability to work was how Bill man-
aged to survive, but life in the camp was 
still unimaginably harsh. He and all the 
prisoners worked endless hours yet had 
to subsist on starvation rations. They 
endured indiscriminate beatings from 
the Nazi guards. The dead and dying 
were everywhere.

One of Bill’
s most vivid and 
heart-wrenching memories from his 
imprisonment arose when he remem-
bered the bone-chilling cold everyone 
suffered.
“From the crematoria at Buchenwald, 
flames were shooting into the air day 
and night from the chimney,
” he recalled. 
“When we were ordered outside, I was 
so cold, I was always shivering. I put 
my hands in my pockets for warmth. 
Sometimes when there was a downdraft, 
the smoke came down, and I noticed 
it was warmer where the smoke was. 
So, I went over to that place, but then 
thought, ‘
I’
m warming myself on the 
flames of my own people.
’
”
Despite living through horrors like 
that, fate intervened for Bill once again 
in April 1945, when he was 17. “There 
was an announcement on April 5 saying 
all Jews should gather in the appelplatz 
(square). A man in the camp told me 
to go to the kinderblock (children’
s bar-
rack), which saved my life. The barrack 
leader was a Czech gentile, and when 
we heard the announcement, he said, 
‘
Children, if someone comes to kill us, 
they’
ll have to come in with guns. We’
re 
not going anyplace.’
” 

AFTER LIBERATION
After hiding for several days, Bill was 
liberated on April 11, 1945. Sadly, 
his brother perished the week before 
American soldiers freed the camp.
Notably, a fellow prisoner who 
reached freedom with Bill was Elie 
Wiesel, who had been on the same 
transport in January. Years later, a 
proud moment for Bill and his wife 
occurred when Wiesel was scheduled 
to speak at Rochester College. Bill’
s 

wife Ellie tried to get tickets, and when 
she couldn’
t, she spoke to the college 
president and said her husband had 
been liberated with Wiesel. The pres-
ident invited the Kayes to a reception 
where they met Wiesel, and the two 
men were both honored at the event.
After surviving the horrors of 
WWII, Bill was elated to learn his 
mother was alive. She had remarried in 
the camp, becoming Sylvia Goldstein, 
and even though she had lied about 
her age to avoid extermination, Bill 
saw her name on one of the survivor 
lists published after the camps were 
liberated, and they found each other. A 
relative in New York sponsored Sylvia 
and her new husband so they could 
leave Europe for America. After being 
widowed, Bill’
s mother remained in 
New York, and while vacationing in 
the Catskills in 1984, she became ill. 
After she suffered a stroke, Bill moved 
her to Michigan to recover, but she 
passed away that year at the age of 87.
Bill had come to the U.S. through 
the assistance of the Hebrew 
Immigrant Aid Society and lived with 
his mother and stepfather in New 
York. He got a job with Albee Homes 
in Pennsylvania, selling pre-cut homes 
(a type of housing kit consisting of 
pre-cut materials for a home, popular 
in the first half of the 20th century). 
He found he had more interest in the 
actual building than in selling, so he 
transitioned to becoming a builder.
The company sent him to Michigan in 
the early 1960s, and he settled in Mount 
Clemens. It was in 1969 when, attend-
ing a dance at the Holiday Inn, he met 
his wife Ellie, a history teacher in the 
Warren schools. Their getting married 

“I was so happy to 
have my tatteleh (the 
aff
 ectionate name he 
calls Bill) celebrate with 
me! I feel very respectful 
of my grandfather. He 
wasn’
t able to have a bar 
mitzvah because of the 
war, and I was privileged 
to be able to celebrate 
with him.”

— ELIJAH

“