[2][3] He is listed as arriving in the United States in May 1938 on the Polish ship Piłsudski at age 17, under the care of his aunt Mary Schachter, who was a U.S.
[6] Not long after arriving in the United States, Bonus performed with the Goldfaden Theatre (funded by the International Worker's Order), and started to give concerts and sing Yiddish songs on the radio with Arnold Jaffe.
In 1942 he joined the Ben Ami troupe in Detroit (managed by Abraham Littman) and performed the works of Peretz Hirschbein, Henrik Ibsen and Henri Bernstein, and subsequently did a nine-month tour with the Folksbiene in Los Angeles.
[9] He then returned to New York City and started acting in Vaudeville theatre there, including in Israel Rosenberg's theater on Clinton Street.
[3] In that year he also met his future second wife, Mina Bern, while performing together in a show called "Shalom, Tel Aviv".
[3] In the late 1950s, he toured with an artist group funded by the Farbad-Labor Zionist Order, which included Bonus and Mina Bern, Lily Lilliano, Leon Liebgold and the pianist S.
[12] The group toured South America for a number of years as the Farband Players, visiting Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, and Venezuela.
[2] That same year he performed on Broadway with "Let's Sing Yiddish", a revue of various songs by Itsik Manger, Mordecai Gebirtig, Morris Rosenfeld and others, staged by Mina Bern.