Gotz urges others to overcome prejudice

Elly Gotz was only 13 when the Second World War broke out in his hometown in 1941, changing the young Lithuanian boy's life forever.

Now, nearing 80, the retired engineer from Toronto travels the country, telling his tragic stories of the years he spent during the war in a crowded Jewish ghetto and various concentration camps, surviving hunger, disease, hatred and mass murders.

Gotz recalls the day in 1941 when Germany invaded the Soviet Union.

"The tanks were rolling through our city and our lives changed profoundly," Gotz said to the large crowd who packed the Crabtree Auditorium at Mount Allison University last Thursday night.

He said it was immediately announced that the Jews were the enemies of all the people, he explained, and that if a German soldier was shot, 200 Jews would be shot in retaliation.

"And it didn't matter if it was a Jew who shot them, we were responsible."

The only child of a Jewish family, Gotz and his parents lived a modest life in Kovno, Lithuania and he enjoyed school, particularly math, science and history. He dreamed in his younger years of becoming an engineer and learning how to fly an airplane.

That young life was shattered when the Germans invaded and the Gotz family was soon forced into a ghetto, where they lived for nearly three years.

"They put us in one part of the city, which was surrounded by barbed wire, and we were packed in very tight and we had very little living space per person."

Life in their new surroundings was tough, said Gotz.

"There was no food . . . and my parents, they had to go to slave labour and do something that they were told to do, that they didn't get paid for."

Jews from the ages of 16 to 60 were forced to work, digging ditches, cleaning hospitals, working in the factories, and building the airport.

He recalls on one particular day in Oct. 1941, it was announced that everyone was required to stay home from work but they had to arrive at a big open field in the middle of the ghetto by 6 a.m. that morning.

"Nobody knew why," said Gotz.

When they arrived, a man in an SS uniform stood in the centre of that field, asking the Jews questions as they filed by. Out of the 36,000 people who lived in the ghetto at that time, about 10,000 of them were separated and taken on the other side of the fence, to a former German defense fort.

"We didn't know what was going on . . . where they went or what had happened to them."

Gotz said he discovered about a year later what had happened to those 10,000 Jews.

"There, over a few days, the 10,000 people were machine-gunned to death - men, women and children. And their bodies were thrown in trenches."

Later on, the Nazis decided to dig up the bodies and burn them so there would be no evidence remaining of the murders. The POWs who were helping to dig up the bodies escaped one night and returned to the ghetto and told everyone what had happened to the missing Jews.

The man in charge of that operation, said Gotz, is well-known to Canadians because he spent his post-war years in Canada.

Helmut Rauca came to Canada in 1947 after telling authorities he had worked as a police officer in Russia. Finally, after 30 years, the RCMP found him and deported him back to Germany where he was to be tried for mass murder. He died before he went to court.

Gotz also told a story of a "very critical, emotional and threatening event in my life," which occurred three years after his family had moved into the ghetto.

By 1944, only 8,000 people remained out of the 36,000 that had started out there (most of the children were taken away and murdered during that time).

With the Russian Army getting closer and the war starting to go against Germany, the soldiers announced they were taking the Jews out of the ghetto to work somewhere else.

"And we did not believe it . . . we were sure they were going to walk us out the door and murder us," said Gotz. "So we decided quite impromptu that we are not going, we are going to hide."

So Gotz and his parents, several aunts and uncles, and friends hid in a room in the basement.

"We decided that, if they find us, we will commit suicide."

His mother, who had been working as a nurse at the local hospital, had prepared a tray with syringes filled with a heart drug. If they were discovered in the basement, the plan was to inject themselves with a large dose of the drug, which would cause a heart attack.

Gotz recalls the devastated look on his mother's face as she sat there, likely contemplating what she would be forced to do when the time came.

"I was sitting there and looking at the syringes and wondering if my mother would be strong enough to do it to me," he said. "Then I decided she was a strong woman and she will not leave me behind."

After four days and nights in the basement room, wondering what was happening, they finally decided to emerge from their hiding place. They saw the others in the ghetto walking towards a train with freight cars, bags in hand.

"So we decided this time they hadn't lied to us and so we got on the train."

The train journey was miserable, said Gotz, where they were packed in to the wagons, with each car carrying 150 or more people.

"People started to faint, people started to die, they started to shout and go crazy," said Gotz, recalling they traveled three days and nights before arriving at a women's concentration camp where his mother and aunts were unloaded.

The men continued on for another two days, arriving in Dachau concentration camp # 1, a labour camp.

The commandant, Gotz recalled, was a vicious man.

"They took away all our clothes, shaved our heads and our body hair. . . then they gave us striped uniforms and put us to work."

With only a bowl of soup and a slice of bread daily to eat, they became thinner and thinner, he said.

At the age of 17, Gotz was six feet tall but weighed less than 70 pounds

"First we lost our fat, then our muscles; we became walking skeletons. We were very hungry. Hunger is a very painful experience; the pangs don't stop . . ."

Many people in the camp died from hunger, others died from disease brought on by a lack of washing facilities.

Gotz's father was becoming weaker every day and Gotz said he was worried he would not survive to see the end of the war.

"I could see the end of the war and I thought 'he's going to die. He's going to die any minute now.''"

On April 29, 1945, Gotz's father was so tired and weak he did not get up to get his bowl of soup and bread. As Gotz was standing in line to get his and his dad's daily meal, he said he heard a noise outside and ran out to hear shouts of "The Americans are here; we are free."

He went in to tell his father the good news, who answered him with, "that's nice, have you got the bread?"

"My moment of liberation; have you got the bread," said Gotz.

Following the war, Gotz and his father were reunited with his mother and together they lived in Germany, Norway, Rhodesia and South Africa. He came to Canada in 1964 with his wife and three children.

He went on to become a director of a successful company and later managed other corporations. Gotz is a volunteer speaker and educator at the Holocaust Centre of Toronto.

"This is something that happened more than 60 years ago . . . but this is my history, my story, and it gives you an idea of the effect of some political decisions in some countries that can affect lives, like mine."

Gotz said he speaks out about what happened to him in an effort to educate others.

"I come here to talk to you for a reason. Not because I want to tell you those sad stories. I come to tell you what happens when prejudice becomes government policy."

Government, he cautioned, can be the biggest bully of them all.

"When times become difficult, like they did in Germany in 1928 and 1933 when there was depression and inflation and terrible times, government can use prejudice and hatred as a way of being elected . . . and this can happen at any time."

Gotz said everyone has to learn to recognize and overcome their own prejudices.

"Prejudice is a human illness that can enter any one of us."

Bill Chernin, director of university services for the Atlantic Jewish Council, was also on hand for Gotz's presentation, educating the crowd on the similarities between the holocaust and the situation now occurring in Darfur.

"What's happening in Darfur today is the same story, just different characters and detail," said Chernin. "It's the same ugly thing and it's happening again."

Chernin said he hopes to encourage others to do what they can to defend the people of Darfur, helping to end the genocide in Sudan.

He urged the students and community residents who attended the presentation last week to write letters or make a phone call to their politicians, to ask them what action they are taking to end the worst humanitarian crisis of our time.