Holocaust Survivor Skydives For The First Time At 89 — ‘I Loved It’
Holocaust survivor Elly Gotz skydived for the first time earlier in July. Image by youtube
By Ari Feldman July 13, 2017
Elly Gotz, a Holocaust survivor, took to the skies earlier this month when he skydived for the first time, at 89 years old. Gotz, who was liberated from Dachau when he was 17, dropped from 13,000 feet in the air.
“I’m very happy I did it,” Gotz told The Star shortly after landing in Cookstown, a town in the Canadian province of Ontario. “I loved it, I just loved it.”
Gotz, who was born in Lithuania, was taken to the Kovno ghetto as a teenager. When he was liberated from Dachau, he said he weighed less than 70 pounds. After living in Africa and Europe, Gotz, his wife and their three children moved to Canada in the 1960s.
“He loves to learn, he loves to have new experiences, he has done a lot of things in his life,” said Julia Gotz, Elly Gotz’s daughter. “I think that is something too about living through the Holocaust, you really know you’re alive and not forever maybe. He doesn’t have as much fear as I do.”
Contact Ari Feldman at [email protected] or on Twitter @aefeldman.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30
