Elly Gotz was born in Kovno (Kaunas), Lithuania, in 1928. He and his family survived the Kovno ghetto, and then Elly and his father were deported to the Kaufering subcamp of Dachau. After the war, the Gotz family moved to Norway and then Zimbabwe. Elly then moved to South Africa and immigrated to Toronto with his family in 1964. Elly Gotz is the author of Flights of Spirit.