Elsa Thon was born in Pruszków, Poland, in 1923. During the war, she escaped the Warsaw ghetto and lived on a farm before moving to Krakow and living under a false identity. Elsa's Jewish identity was discovered, and she was sent to the Plaszow forced labour camp and two other forced labour camps. After the war, Elsa lived in Israel and Argentina before moving to Canada with her husband in 1980, settling in Toronto. Elsa Thon is the author of If Only It Were Fiction.