Elly Gotz was born on March 8, 1928, in Kovno (Kaunas), Lithuania. After the war, his family lived in Germany, desperate to emigrate; in the spring of 1947, they were accepted to Norway as refugees, and later that year they were able to immigrate to Zimbabwe to join extended family members.

Elly eventually moved to Johannesburg to continue his education, graduating from the University of the Witwatersrand with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering degree. In South Africa, Elly created new businesses in entertainment and sound recording, and then worked in the leather and plastics industries. He married Esme Cohen in 1958 and they, along with their three children, immigrated to Toronto in 1964.

In Toronto, Elly established a number of different businesses and achieved his lifelong dream of becoming a pilot, later moving on to glider flying.

In 2017, at the age of eighty-nine, he fulfilled another aeronautical dream by going skydiving. Elly has educated thousands of students through his work at the Neuberger Holocaust Education Centre, and 2018 was his third trip on the educational tour March of Remembrance and Hope.

Julius (Judel) Gotz

Elly’s father. Kaunas, Lithuania, 1926

Elly and his mother, Sonja, after their emigration from Germany. Halden, Norway, 1947.

Sonja (née Wilentschuk) Gotz

Elly’s mother, Kaunas, Lithuania, 1926.

Joshua Gotz

Elly’s paternal grandfather. Kaunas, Lithuania, 1934.

Bluma Gotz

Elly’s paternal grandmother. Kaunas, Lithuania, 1934.

Elly Gotz, 6

Elly on his first bicycle. Kaunas, Lithuania, 1934.

Elly Gotz

Elly riding his bike on the main street of Laisvės Alėja, the street on which his family lived. Kaunas, Lithuania, circa 1935.

Elly Gotz, 8

Elly on summer vacation in Kulautuva, Lithuania. 1936.

Elly with family

From left to right: Sonia, a relative; Elly’s mother, Sonja; his uncle Samuel Gotz; his grandmother Bluma Gotz; Elly; his father, Julius; his grandmother Chaya Leah (Alte); and his grandfather Joshua Gotz. Kaunas, Lithuania, 1936.

Elly and his mother

Kaunas, Lithuania, 1937.

Elly Gotz, 13

Elly at age thirteen in the uniform he was supposed to wear to high school, which he never got to attend due to Germany’s invasion of Lithuania. Kaunas, Lithuania, 1941.

Elly Gotz Teaching

Elly (standing) teaching students in the Kovno ghetto Fachschule (trade school). On Elly’s right is Itzchak Kopilowitz, whom he reunited with in Tel Aviv in 2007. The photographer, George Kadish, captured this and many other images clandestinely in the ghetto in 1944; fifty years later, in 1994, Elly discovered the photo by coincidence at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC.

Hunting

Elly with a dead crocodile after hunting on the Zambezi River. Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), 1954.

Graduation

Elly’s graduation as an engineer from Witwatersrand University. Johannesburg, South Africa, 1952.

ABOUT