A Stroll above Dachau's Tombs

Last week, I sat down in the theater with the rest of Grade 12 to listen to somebody speak. It wasn’t about college, or university, about drug use or any of the typical stuff that is par for the course when you go to school. If I’m going to be honest, those talks are cookie cutter and often times useless, but this speech was different. I don’t know how many of us knew, but we were going to be listening to a survivor of the Holocaust. His name is Elly Gotz, and his story is nothing short of heartbreaking but incredible as well.

Elly was born in Lithuania in 1928 to a banker and a hospital nurse. He loved science, history, and literature. A man of the world in the making. But of course as you should have already guessed, he was Jewish. And being Jewish at that period of time in Europe branded you with a terrible fate.

After living in a ghetto for three years as roughly 10 000 men, women, and children were killed, he was moved to Dachau in Germany with his father, being separated from his mother. They would work rigorously for 12 hours a day, whether it be under moonlight, sunlight, or no light at all, it did not matter. The Nazis treated Jews worse than animals, with a clear intent to hurt them as much as possible. I find it amazing how anybody could hold such hatred within themselves in order to needlessly brutalize a group of people, just by projecting their own biases on them. How can you starve people? How can you force them to work until they drop dead? How can you look into the face of your family and friends and not be consumed by guilt after doing all of this? Not to say that every Nazi was like this - and they certainly all weren’t - but this turned into a political party for power-hungry criminals, you have to understand that. And Elly got that across to us quite clearly.

Elly spent months and months starving alongside his father, with people dying around him as he lived in a shack where the closest thing to a mattress to keep you from the cold hard ground was one mangy, thin blanket. They had their heads shaved, clothes taken away to be replaced by uniforms, were shoved along in order to be pushed to work harder and harder, even though they only had a slice of bread, cheese and a glass of milk each day.

Of course, Elly got out when the war ended in April. His father almost died, but with Elly’s tender care he was able to survive. Elly weighed 60 pounds when he got out of the Dachau, and his father weighed 5 pounds less than that. You’re barely alive at that point. But I am happy to say that Elly and his father did recover and reunite with his mother, which is more than you can say for a lot of those people in the camps.

You can tell that this man could have talked for four hours straight without a break, because he really is a man of the world like I said. He’s been around the world and has met a lot of people. He’s been through a lot as you can tell, and the most wondrous thing of all is that he has healed after all of this. He was making jokes during his presentation, he’s healthy at the age of 88, and he loves speaking about his experiences. I remember in particular that he talked about how he hated all Germans after what happened to him, but after a few years, he let it go. He reasoned that it was pointless of him to hate at that point, and he ascribed that to a quote from Buddha who said “hatred is like taking poison and expecting the other person to die.” I found that very interesting, especially given what he went through, and it’s understandable to see how he felt the way he did. But Elly realized that he couldn’t go around all of his life hating every German he saw, because not only were most Germans not affiliated with Nazis, but he was making things worse for himself. The only way he could heal or move on would be to accept that things were what they were and make the most of the life that he had. For that, I have respect for him that goes well beyond any words I could write down.

These are only small highlights from his presentation though. He had so many other things to tell us, but he couldn’t as much as he wanted to due to time constraints. I would love to go to one of the universities he does these presentations at and hear his full story, because while the condensed version was captivating, the full version would give me an even greater appreciation of the man that Gotz is.

In all my years at this school, I’ve never gone to a presentation where somebody did not pull out their phone. At least, that weren’t in my field of view. And while I’m certain there were some people who did at this presentation, I didn’t see anybody do it. And I’d like to think that very few people did because Elly Gotz is a man worthy of 110 percent of everybody’s attention, because his story needs to be heard and it shouldn’t be left to the wayside. Typically I hear criticisms of some of these presentations and whatnot, with the most common complaint being that ‘it was stupid’ regardless of whether or not I agree with them. I didn’t hear any of that with this one though, not one word. And that makes me proud of this school community, because despite any issues we might have, we do listen when it ultimately counts.

So please, make plans to hear this man talk and tell his full story, because I plan to one of these days. Listen to this man talk, you need to mark down a date for it because it’s probably a different perspective on the Holocaust than anything you’ve ever heard before.

So please, if you’re going to take anything away from this, it’s that Elly Gotz is somebody who’s been through a lot, who knows a lot, and deserves all of the respect in the world. This is Josh Volkers for the Titan Times, signing out. Stay strong, Titans. Elly is, after all.

#holocaust #history #guestspeaker #culture #motivation