The Next Chapter Project: Wilfred “Bill” Kay
No Goodbyes
By Natasha Tabachnikoff
Jewish Community High School of the Bay
In 1941, Shlomo Katz, now Wilfred “Bill” Kay, was lucky enough to go to a summer camp for a month. Bill was already more than 200 miles away from his home. Born, on May, 16, 1928, to Pesach and Sara Katz, a Jewish couple, he was the third of seven children. But in 1941, he and two of his sisters were living in an orphanage. Bill had been chosen, based on his academic standing and good behavior, to go to a summer camp in Belarus for the month of June. To get to his train on time, Bill had to wake up early in the morning. He didn’t wake up his sisters and had not said goodbye to them the night before. He would be seeing them in a month, when he returned. “It always bothered me that I never said goodbye to them,” he said.[i]
Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. Bill never saw any members of his family again.
The Nazis Overtake Poland
On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. Bill, in his hometown of Pultusk, Poland, was 11. He had been expecting to start the fourth grade. School was canceled, and some of the Jews of Pultusk immediately fled east, away from the advancing Germans. Bill’s family spent the night with other Jews on the floor of a synagogue in Wyszkow, a town about 12 miles from Pultusk. In the morning, the Jews were forced onto the street—the synagogue had been set on fire—and led by the Nazis out of the town to a farm. Pesach, Bill’s father, was separated from the rest of his family. After sleeping that night in a barn, Bill’s family left Wyszkow to return to their home, where the Nazi soldiers had told Sara she would find her husband. Bill’s father had not returned to Pultusk. Sara attempted to get answers about her husband’s whereabouts from the Nazi occupiers, but their responses were unsatisfactory. The town generally accepted that a number of Jewish men, including Bill’s father, had been shot. Bill knows this was critical to the family’s later decision to leave.
Representatives of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union had come to an agreement under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. It was a non-aggression pact that secretly annexed the western portion of Poland to Germany and the eastern portion to the Soviet Union. In a month’s time, all of Poland had been occupied and annexed by either the Nazis or the Soviet Union.[ii]
The Trek Eastward
Two weeks after Bill’s family returned from Wyszkow, the Nazis expelled all of the Jews from Pultusk, instructing them to go east. Sara led her children on a trek east to Russian-occupied Poland, where she hoped to find safety. Bill describes this as a hectic time: “Things were happening so fast that the only thing on your mind was the next meal or the next place to sleep. It was a day-to-day experience. And you worried about the next day. I don’t think any deep thinking was going on with most people. You just thought of how to survive.”[iii]
Bill’s family walked for a month and went through the Russian border into the Soviet Union. They continued east to Liakhovichy, a town in modern-day Belarus. There, the family stayed in one room in a farmhouse, and Sara began to work to support her children: “It was a tremendous relief,” Bill said. “We felt safe now. The threat of the Germans was no longer there. We had a room with a dirt floor, but to us it was heaven.”[iv]
But Bill’s mother soon became very sick and was too ill to work and earn money to buy food for her whole family. The Russian authorities suggested that she put some of her children into an orphanage. Sara wanted to avoid this, but letting some of her children go soon became a better choice. First, the two youngest children went into an orphanage. Later, Bill was sent away with two of his younger sisters: Syma, 9, and Lea, 7. Bill’s oldest brother, Sholom, was the only one to remain with their mother.
Remembering Mother
“I have memories of my mother and the different situations that we talked about, and I am just awed by how she managed to take care of seven children under such terrible circumstances,”[v] Bill said. Sara had worked extremely hard as a mother of seven before the war. After the loss of her husband, she was faced with the task of providing food for her children during war: “My mother would buy fruit—apples, and pears—in bulk,” Bill said. “She would fill bags with the fruit and go out and sell it to the German army. Occasionally, to my amazement, they would pay her. But that was the very beginning of the war. The most unselfish thing
she did, very reluctantly, for the good of the children, and the biggest sacrifice
a mother can make, was to give up her children to an orphanage. To me, she is
a hero.”[vi]
The camp Bill attended in June 1941 was considered excellent. It was intended for the children of the elites and prominent government officials. It was like a resort. The food was good, and it offered entertaining activities. Bill felt privileged and lucky to be there, but guilty, too, because the other members of his family were unable to enjoy it. Today, Bill knows that being chosen to go to summer camp saved his life.
Saving the Children
On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, breaking the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and prompting the Soviet Union to enter World War II. The summer camp workers immediately decided to take the children to safety, away from the fighting. The Germans were so close that the Soviet army train taking the children deeper into Russia was almost hit by a German Army plane. In a village in Mordovia, the workers set up an orphanage for the children who had not been returned to their families. The children went to school and earned food on local farms, taking the place of laborers fighting in the war.
Escaping to the Ukraine
It was standard that the boys left the orphanage to work in factories at 14. Bill had developed a close friendship with a teacher at the orphanage, Ana, who, until she moved to the Ukraine, had been able to delay his departure. So at 14 1/2, Bill went to work in a factory. The environment was shocking to Bill. His first day, he was robbed of all his possessions. Everything about his life—his work, free time, habits—was now dictated. He was able to contact Ana, who suggested that he come to the Ukraine and live with her. Although he did not consider leaving for a few months, Bill eventually decided to run away. He rode trains for several weeks to get to Ana’s hometown in the Ukraine. Bill says his friendship has no simple explanation. She took a liking to him, and the attention was the closest thing to a family he had. They grew closer, and their friendship evolved. He was able, with her assistance, to establish a life in the Ukraine until the end of the war, working in a factory and concealing his Jewish identity.
What Became of the Family?
The war ended in 1945, when Bill was 17. Bill returned to Belarus, to search for Sara and his brothers and sisters. He was told about the violence against the Jews in the town: Twice, Jews in Liakhovichy had been rounded up and taken out of the town and executed in the fields. During the first roundup, Bill’s family had been able to hide with their landlady and escape the killings. The woman Bill spoke with knew that four children were hiding with Sara. Later, when the Jews were targeted a second time, Sara and four of her children
were killed.
Bill’s wish was to go to America. He waited four years in a displaced persons camp in Germany until he finally traveled to California. On September 5, 1949, he arrived in Oakland. He rented an apartment, worked, and studied English, which he had begun learning while in Germany. After a year in America, he was drafted into the army and served during the Korean War in West Germany. He worked as a liaison between the army and local government and was able to use his German-language skills. After the Korean War, the G.I. Bill paid for Bill’s college education in electrical engineering, allowing him to build a career path on which he stayed until retirement.
Even today, Bill is unsure what any of his siblings experienced during the war. No one with whom he has spoken remembers the names of his four siblings who reportedly were killed, along with their mother, outside Liakhovichy. Two of Bill’s siblings remain missing. They disappeared at unknown times. There are no official documents to confirm Bill’s parents’ and siblings’ deaths. He continues to search for information and to connect with organizations, other survivors, and their family members in search of information. All accounts and rumors have led him to assume his family members were killed, shot in massacres outside of town. He also began telling his story. Encouraged by his daughter, he wrote a memoir of his life for her and his grandchildren. In the 1990s, after the Iron Curtain fell and communications with Poland became easier, Bill wrote to Pultusk, his hometown. He received copies of his and his siblings’ birth certificates: “They are the only documents I have to prove that they existed on this earth,”[vii] he said.
Endnotes
[i] Wilfred ‘Bill’ Kay, interviews by Natasha Tabachnikoff, January 22, 2011, February 5, 2011, February 26, 2011.
[ii] United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “German-Soviet Pact.” Holocaust Encyclopedia. http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005156. Accessed March 12, 2011.
[iii] Wilfred ‘Bill’ Kay.
[iv] Wilfred ‘Bill’ Kay.
[v] Wilfred ‘Bill’ Kay.
[vi] Wilfred ‘Bill’ Kay.
[vii] Wilfred ‘Bill’ Kay.
Works Cited
Wilfred ‘Bill’ Kay, interviews by Natasha Tabachnikoff, January 22, 2011, February 5, 2011, February 26, 2011.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “German-Soviet Pact.” Holocaust Encyclopedia. http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005156. Accessed March 12, 2011.
John Roth, Ph.D. The Holocaust Chronicle: A History in Words and Pictures. (Publications International, 2000.)
Jewish Family and Children’s Services Holocaust Center. Next Chapter Project Resource Anthology.
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