Mr. Elly Gotz Shares Inspiring Message for Holocaust Education Week

Mr. Elly Gotz shared his story of survival, strength and forgiveness with our Middle and Upper School boys at our annual Holocaust Education Week assembly on October 30. Mr. Gotz was 13 years old when Nazi Germany occupied Lithuania in 1941. He and his family, along with 29,000 other Lithuanian Jews, were put into the Kovno ghetto. In 1944, he was shipped to Dachau. He was fortunate to survive, and was liberated in 1945 by the American army.

 

Mr. Gotz, who co-founded of the Neuberger Holocaust Education Centre in Toronto, stressed to the boys that it is important to show compassion for others who you see being persecuted, and to not be a bystander. He said that the hatred and prejudice experienced by the Jews are not behaviours exclusive to the Nazis. There are many countries today that persecute minorities, he said, and we all must work hard to overcome the human predisposition to hatred.

 

Mr. Gotz told the boys that he chose to release himself from the hatred he felt toward his oppressors. By doing so, he said, he was able to free himself and go on to live a happy and fulfilling life.

 

After the war, he studied engineering in Germany, and then lived in Norway, Zimbabwe and South Africa before moving to Toronto in 1964. He loves to learn and experience new things. He learned how to fly airplanes when he was in his 40s, fulfilling a childhood dream. This past summer, to celebrate his 89th birthday, he completed his first parachute jump.