I was born on November 23, 1916 in Lodz, Poland. I came from a large religious family and was the youngest of seven brothers. 

 

I was a young newlywed with a child when the Nazis captured us. My young wife and infant son were murdered, along with my entire family. Bluma, the daughter of my oldest brother also survived. Bluma went to Israel after the war and remains there in Jerusalem, the matriarch of a large family with three children, ten grandchildren and many great-grandchildren.  Bluma and I remained very close, even though we lived worlds away from one another.

 

After I was liberated from the concentration camp, I was sent to a sanitarium in Malmo, Sweden to recuperate my health. There I met my future wife, Freda Halpern, also a Holocaust survivor from Lodz

 

We married in 1948. We had a lovely apartment in Malmo, Sweden, where we had two daughters, Betty and Nancy. I worked in a shoe factory, riding my bicycle to work every day. I also bought alcohol ration cards from people who did not need them and re-sold them to Swedes who did. I was known for having a good sense of humor and had a positive, upbeat personality. I had wavy brown hair and hazel green eyes and I often had a song on my lips. I seemed to attract friends wherever I went.

 

In 1954, my family immigrated to the United States, first to Pittsburgh, PA where we had other survivor friends, and then to Detroit, where Freda had two first cousins who also had survived. I opened up a grocery store in a Jewish neighborhood on Dexter Avenue. Freda went to Beauty School and earned her cosmetology license. I was very proud the day I became a United States citizen.

On October 30, 1961, Elias was on his way to the Eastern Market in his red grocery van to buy produce for his store when a semi-trailer truck jackknifed on a wet John Lodge expressway, slammed into his truck, and killed him. He died at Mt. Carmel Mercy Hospital in Detroit. He was only 44 years old. 

 

Many mourners lamented that Elias had survived so many horrors and tragedies in the Holocaust, only to die at so young an age in a car accident in the United States.