After about six weeks in the ghetto, Bill, his mother and his two sisters were transported in closed cattle cars to Auschwitz-Birkenau Death Camp. His mother was sent directly to the gas chamber while he and his sisters were sent to work. Bill remembers that there were dead corpses piled up in large mounds in front of the barracks every morning. Sometimes, bodies would lie decomposing for up to three or four days. The prisoners had very little food to eat; they were separated into groups of six and forced to share one small bowl of soup without utensils. After about 11 days in the camp, Bill should have received a tattoo but instead, he was pulled out of line and placed in a cattle car that took him through the Bavarian mountains to Buchenwald Concentration Camp. Upon arriving at Buchenwald, the prisoners were stripped naked, their heads were shaved, and Bill was dumped into a tub of chemicals. He then was forced to sit on the floor of a shower room which the Nazi guards said was a gas chamber. For two days, his skin and eyes burned from the strong chemicals.

By coincidence, in Buchenwald, Bill reunited with his brother-in-law, who had been arrested by the Nazis when he was disguised as a Christian resistance fighter. However, seven days later, Bill was transported to work at a gasoline refinery factory in Leuna, near Leipzig, Germany, from Spring 1944 to September 1944. In March 1945, he was transported back to Buchenwald. He appeared so cold and frozen that he was taken directly to the crematorium. Fortunately, one of the prisoners discovered that he was alive, took him to the infirmary and saved his life. While in Buchenwald, he once again reunited with his brother-in-law. On April 4, 1945, the American Army came and liberated Buchenwald. Bill was 21-years-old and weighed only 72 pounds at liberation.

After the war, Bill and his brother-in-law traveled to Brussels, Belgium where they were reunited with one of Bill’s sisters, who had been hiding as a Christian. They stayed in Belgium for about two months. Bill was also able to locate his two other sisters and some cousins in a Displaced Persons Camp in Germany. From 1945 to 1946, Bill worked at the United Nations (UNRA) distributing food to displaced people living in the surrounding small towns.

In 1946, Bill and one of his sisters boarded an army boat heading for New York City. They arrived on August 31, 1946. Bill began working as an errand boy for a cosmetology office in Manhattan. He learned English and stayed in the city for three and a half years. On March 3, 1950, Bill decided to come to California to visit his uncle, and he has not left since. He received his high school diploma from Roosevelt High School at the age of 26 and obtained a license in cosmetology in 1950. In 1953, he opened his own successful cosmetic house in Beverly Hills and married a native Californian, June Gardener, after knowing her for only three months. He has been married for 42 years and has two daughters and four grandsons. Bill speaks at the Museum of Tolerance to educate the younger generation and to break the silence for those that did not speak up against such injustices.