Elias is a Polish-Jewish immigrant who had came to the United States for a better life. Having settled in Brooklyn for over 20 years, he and his small family of 4 would have to leave all their belongings behind once more as the flood comes. Settling in the refugee site near Mount Pleasant, Elias' line of work as a paint salesman is one that did not see blistering prospect in the post-apocalypse. Falling into poverty, his older son Larry was forced to work as a laborer to support his family after finishing high school, while his younger son Bernard would have to drop out early to do the same. There, the young Bernard would see and share the struggles of the common worker, and became interested in the works of social activism, first involving himself during his apprenticeship at a local steel mill by assisting union representatives in organizing sit-ins. At 16, his mentor, Barry Gladstone, would recruit him into the underground Revolutionary Military Committee, secretly headed by the sitting Senator in the Knesset and devoted Communist, Milton Wolff. Identified as one of the brightest minds of his age and with the blessings of his family, he was sent to the Detroit Commune to the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor to receive an education.

In the aftermath of the fall of the Communal Government in Detroit, Ann Arbor remains independent not under the control of neither Lansing nor Columbus. Despite this, there remains significant Communist sympathies especially in the student body of UMich. The county had at that point effectively been run by the Student Union of the University of Michigan who stepped in in place of the ailing county government. Young Bernard was elected as Secretary of the Student Union when Red Army tanks marched into the University campus, greeted by the red flags and portraits of Lenin amongst the student body, commanded by his idol - Milton Wolff. As Ann Arbor falls back under Communist control, Bernard, now known by his comrades as "Bernie", enlists in the Red Army as he joins the march to Lansing.

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