Elly Gotz was born in 1928, in Kaunas, Lithuania. After the war, his family lived in a Displaced Persons camp for two years before immigrating to Norway and then Zimbabwe. Elly graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering degree. He married in 1958 and immigrated to Toronto in 1964. In Toronto, Elly achieved his lifelong dream of becoming a pilot. In 2017, at 89, he fulfilled another aeronautical dream by going skydiving. Elly has educated thousands of students and 2018 will mark his third trip on the educational tour the March of Remembrance and Hope.