(Credit: Hasnain Dattu)
Background: 96 year old Holocaust survivor Elly Gotz, now living in Toronto, Canada was born on March 8, 1928, in Kaunas, Lithuania. When Germany occupied Lithuania in 1941, Elly was just 13 years old. He spent the next three years in the Kaunas ghetto and later 10 months in Dachau concentration camp, isolated from the rest of society and struggling to survive.
“When the Germans took over, they said the Jews were the enemies of all people, they should be taken out of society and locked up in ghettoes.”
Gotz and his father ended up in Dachau, one of the first concentration camps constructed by Nazi Germany, which was established in 1933 near Munich. They were put in a Dachau subcamp No.1 which was a work camp.
“I spent 10 months in that camp, in total starvation, working on construction site twelve hours every day.”
Gotz recalled weighing 70 pounds when was liberated – his father even less.
Fortunately, Elly, his mother, father and aunt survived and were reunited after the war. A baby cousin was saved by a Lithuanian Christian woman and survived.
Elly stayed 2 years in Germany, left for Norway, Later for Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) in Africa, became an engineer, emigrated to Canada in 1964.
Elly sent a message to the Lithuanian people who participated at the march on September 23, 2024 commemorating the National Memorial Day for the Genocide of Lithuanian Jews:
“My Lithuanian fellow citizens (I now again have a Lithuanian passport), I honour you, the new generation, for wishing to commemorate the Ponary Genocide.
As a child, the words to the poem by Maironis:
“Kur bėga Šešupė, kur Nemunas teka,
Tai mūsų tėvynė, graži Lietuva”;
(Where the Sheshupe river runs,
where the Nemunas river flows,
that is my homeland, beautiful Lithuania)
used to stir my soul.
Then came the war, and our terrible Jewish history of destruction. Yet, I do not envy you your history either: 46 years, 1944 – 1990, of occupation by the neighbour to the East.
Now I imagine marching with you to Ponary, and thinking of my family members amongst the 9,200 Jews murdered on the 9th Fort in Kaunas on the 29 October 1941 by a Lithuanian police battalion led by Jonas Stelmokas and supervised by Karl Jaeger of the S.S.
And singing with you Lietuva Tevyne musu… (Lithuania my homeland – the national anthem).
Let us pray for a better future, and for peace.”
