Elly (Lasar) Gotz C.M. OC BSc (born March 8, 1928) is a Lithuanian-born Holocaust survivor, engineer, entrepreneur, businessperson, pilot, author, educator, and public speaker. When Nazi Germany invaded Lithuania during the Second World War, he and his family were confined to the Kovno ghetto in Kaunas before being deported to Germany. In 1944, Gotz was sent to Dachau concentration camp, where he was subjected to forced labor until his liberation by American forces on April 29, 1945. After the war, he lived in several countries before immigrating to Canada in 1964. Since 1996, Gotz has shared his Holocaust experiences around the world through Holocaust education and remembrance initiatives, including in high schools, universities, and speaking to groups participating in the March of the Living and the March of Remembrance and Hope. In December 2025, at the age of 97, Elly Gotz was appointed a member of the Order of Canada. He has three children, six grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.
Early life
Elly Gotz was born in Kaunas, Lithuania in 1928 to Sonja and Judel Gotz. His mother Sonja, worked as a surgical nurse and his father Judel sas a bookkeeper. Gotz was an only child and attended a Yiddish school in Lithuania. An Azrieli Foundation education exhibit about Gotz describes him as a child who loved learning, and includes a memoir excerpt about a favourite children's book (in Yiddish, with colourful illustrations) that his father gave him before 1939. There are limited records that place Gotz and his family on vacation in Kulautuva in the mid-1930s. A later account of his story notes that in 1941, at age 13, he had just received a new school uniform and was excited to start the next grade, when the German occupation closed all Jewish schools.
World War II
Gotz and his parents were imprisoned in the Kaunas ghetto after the German occupation, where he and approximately 30,000 Jews were locked up for almost three years. Gotz described life in the ghetto as systematic dehumanization, including the confiscation of property, forced labor, overcrowding, hunger, and the constant threat of violence.
Being initially too young for forced labour, Gotz attended a ghetto trade school, where he trained as a toolmaker, later instructing other children. Over his three-year period in the Kaunas ghetto, Gotz witnessed systematic confiscation of property and mass deportations. Later in life, he recalled witnessing large-scale executions, including the murder of approximately 10,000 men, women, and children at the Ninth Fort on October 29, 1941, later called the Kaunas massacre.
By 1944, the ghetto population had been reduced to approximately 8,000 individuals. During a German search operation that summer, Gotz described a period during that operation in which he and several family members were in hiding in a basement during the German occupation. The group included his parents, three uncles, and an aunt. To conceal the space, they blocked the entrance with a cupboard and remained inside while monitoring sounds from outside, aware that discovery would likely have resulted in their arrest or death. His mother being a nurse, had prepared a contingency plan in the event of discovery - a collective suicide by injections she had prepared on a tray. in his own words, Gotz describes this as the most dramatic even in his life: "On this day, death would come not from the hand of an enemy - it would come from the hand of my beloved mother."
Gotz volunteered to die first, explaining later, “I [didn't] want to see my family die.” While Gotz and his parents avoided discovery at that time, they were later deported by cattle car to concentration camps.
Dachau His mother was deported to Stutthof, while Gotz and his father were deported to Kaufering, Dachau camp #1 in the Dachau concentration camp system. There they were forced to work 12-hour days with minimal rations in a German industrial facility involved in the construction of a large underground factory, intended on producing the first jet fighter plane. A project that was never completed. “If a potato floated in the soup it was a good day,” Gotz recalled in an interview. “No meat, no fat, nothing, and one slice of bread for the whole day. So we starved.” Conditions in the camp were extreme, marked by starvation, disease, and systematic brutality, resulting in the deaths of one third of the prisoners. Gotz later obtained an indoor work assignment, which reduced exposure to extreme weather conditions. During interviews, he stated that a supervisor occasionally provided additional food when he was assigned work at a pump station.
Camp authorities made it clear to inmates that survival was not expected. Gotz remembers a Commandant saying, "we keep the last bullet for you." At times, he had to assist in removing bodies. In later speaking engagements long after the war, he explained, “I got used to carrying dead bodies.”
As the war drew to a close, the remaining prisoners were transferred to the main camp at Dachau, which was severely overcrowded and suffering from catastrophic conditions. When Gotz arrived at the main camp, his father was with him, and was near death from starvation and illness. His father was placed in a bunk that had just been vacated by a deceased prisoner and continued to weaken.
Liberation American forces liberated Dachau on April 29, 1945, shortly after Gotz's 17th birthday. Upon hearing the news, his father appeared to already have lost the will to live. Later during speaking engagements, Gotz illustrated how powerful starvation affects the mind and spirit. Standing in line waiting for his ration of soup and bread for him and his father, Gotz learned that American troops had entered the camp to liberate it. In an interview with the March of the Living Digital Archive Project, Gotz described their moment of liberation: “So, four o’clock, on the 29th of April, I'm in line. I pick up the soup for myself and I say, this is for him, and they gave me another bowl of soup for my father and another piece of bread. And I'm going to him, and he takes the soup, and at that moment, prisoners are shouting, ‘The Americans are here, we are free!’ I told my father, ‘Father, the Americans are here, we are free! The war is over!’ So, he looks at me with that faraway look, and he says, ‘That's good. Have you got the bread?’ That was my moment of liberation.”
Gotz later described liberation as the end of a nightmare and the beginning of a new life. Although he did not have direct contact with American soldiers, he witnessed the reaction of fellow prisoners and expressed lasting gratitude to the American army for their role in liberating the camp and contributing to the defeat of Nazi Germany. Throughout his imprisonment, he maintained a belief, grounded in his understanding of Jewish history, that the Nazi regime would ultimately be defeated. Gotz weighed 70 pounds on liberation day.
Speaking to Western University students, Gotz emphasized that survival depended on a combination of factors, including chance, physical endurance, and having skills that could be exploited by the camp authorities. Gotz described how prisoners who lost the will to survive often died quickly, while those who maintained a sense of purpose or usefulness stood a greater chance of enduring the conditions. Gotz highlighted the psychological impact of imprisonment, mentioning a constant presence of violence, arbitrary punishment, and the knowledge that prisoners were considered disposable. He characterized the Dachau system as an environment designed not only to extract labor but to systematically strip inmates of dignity and humanity, making survival an ongoing struggle rather than a passive condition.
Gotz spent approximately six months recovering in hospital and was later reunited with his mother. It was there he experienced intense anger toward Germans and sought revenge. Gotz has spoken and written about these intense feelings during this time. He describes a turning point in which he reconsidered the moral implications of collective blame. “I gave [the hate] up,” he said. “I realized you can't hate the whole people for what some of them have done. And when I gave up that hate, I started living for the first time.” His mother had survived imprisonment at the Stutthof concentration camp. “I was the only [patient] who had both parents,” Gotz said. “I didn't tell anybody. I was embarrassed by how lucky I was.”
Post-war After WWII, the Gotz family first lived in Germany before emigrating to Norway in 1947. Later that year, the family moved to Zimbabwe (then Southern Rhodesia) to join relatives where Gotz continued his studies and graduated with a Bachelor of Science in engineering from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. While living there, he founded businesses in the entertainment and sound/recording sectors and later worked in the leather and plastics industries.
He married Esme Cohen in 1958, and in 1964 the couple, with their three children, immigrated to Toronto, Canada where he worked as an entrepreneur, he managed factories, and educator.
In 1985 Esme Gotz founded a private vocational school for individuals who dropped out or did not complete school and were looking to learn job skills. in 1979, she started a school for people with learning challenges, to teach basic life skills called, The Springfield School for Girls. Later, Esme Gotz owned a franchise of the Toronto School of Business, opening a campus in Oshawa, and later Pickering and Coburg.
Gotz became a frequent speaker on Holocaust history and antisemitism and did educational trips to Auschwitz for students over many years. Participant feedback has often identified his testimony as a significant component of these programs.
He has also commented publicly on contemporary antisemitism, stating, “I've never seen anything like it,” in reference to recent trends in Canada during 2025.
In his speaking, Gotz has emphasized the consequences of hatred. “It's one of the failures of humanity that we hate,” he said. “As an engineer, I'm so conscious of all the achievements of humanity. But when we hate, we produce nothing.”
Aviation and skydiving He became a private pilot, instrument-rated pilot, and glider pilot. Gotz developed an interest in aviation, and in 1971 Gotz and purchased a single-engine Piper Comanche. He had resumed his flight training in 1968 and received his first Pilot license in 1969. in 1975 he earned his Instrument Rating, allowing him to fly through cloud coverage at night, flew his family to Florida, and was able to fly himself between Canada and the United States on business trips. Later, after selling his plane, he took up flying gliders
In 2017, Gotz made his first tandem skydive in Ontario. The jump was widely covered by Canadian media and was undertaken as a personal milestone rather than a fundraising or promotional event. Gotz stated that the experience reflected his approach to life following the Holocaust, emphasizing resilience, gratitude, and the importance of continuing to engage fully with the world.
Gotz, skydiving to mark his 90th birthday, described the jump as an affirmation of survival and personal freedom, noting that fear had played a defining role in his early life and that confronting it voluntarily held personal meaning. Media coverage highlighted the contrast between his wartime experiences and his continued willingness to pursue physically demanding activities in advanced age.
Gotz has spoken about aviation and skydiving in the context of survival, agency, and recovery after trauma, presenting these activities as personal expressions rather than symbolic gestures. His experiences have been referenced in educational and commemorative settings as part of broader discussions on post-war life among Holocaust survivors.
Public speaking