Includes bibliographical references and index.

"Elly Gotz was born in Kaunas (also called Kovno), Lithuania, in 1928. He writes about his peaceful childhood until the Soviets invaded his country in the summer of 1940 and how his life begins to change under communism. But there is no warning for the upcoming destruction of his Jewish life and community when Nazi Germany occupies Lithuania in the summer of 1941. Escaping the violence propagated under the Lithuanian Provisional Government for six weeks, he and his family are soon forced into the Kovno ghetto by the Nazis, where they are under threat and face persecution--antisemitic laws and pogroms that are soon followed by full-scale massacres. Elly and his family barely survive, and in the summer of 1944, when the ghetto is liquidated, Elly and his father are deported to the notorious Dacha concentration camp. Elly and his father are forced to do slave labour in the Kaufering subcamp, and they are ultimately liberated from Dachau in the spring of 1945. Elly and his family reunite and spend two years in post-war Germany before immigrating to Norway, then Zimbabwe (Southern Rhodesia at the time) and, finally, Canada. In Elly's memoir, he not only recounts his experiences in the Holocaust, but he also discusses how he overcame his hatred, reached his educational goals, and rebuilt life and family after the war."--