to North America came with perks as well. Elly noticed that the Canadian newspapers were full of news about NASA and spaceflight.
The engineer in him wanted to know everything—how NASA built the spacecraft, how they designed the fuel pumps, how they balanced such huge machines…everything. At the same time, Elly had never let go of his childhood dream. The aspiring pilot in him wanted to know what it felt like to sit on a rocket and launch into outer space.
In time, Elly became very successful in Toronto. His drive to learn, invent, and try new things soon paid off, presenting him with rewarding experiences and allowing him to support hundreds of people by providing them with well-paying jobs at his factory. He was also able to save for his children’s education, knowing they wouldn’t have the same difficulty he did getting high school diplomas or going to college.
Eventually, Elly and his family became Canadian citizens. He had lived in Lithuania, Germany, Norway, Rhodesia, South Africa, and now Canada. So, while he was now a proud Canadian, Elly Gotz was truly a citizen of the world. Ultimately, though, what mattered to him was not national identity or pride, but that he and his family were safe and happy. For this, Elly loved Canada. He became an active community member, volunteer, and a member of his synagogue. In the decade that followed, as a generation matured that had never experienced the Holocaust (including his own children), Elly began speaking publicly about the horrors of the Holocaust. Through his own story he would impress upon countless children the danger of one simple feeling: hate.
•••
It was a hot Sunday in July. Elly’s home was empty. The kids were at their cottage by the lake with Esme. He spent most of the day doing a mix of reading, fixing things around the house, and working in the yard. It was an incredibly warm day in Toronto—with the humidity it felt nearly 30°C (about 86°F) all afternoon.
After a few hours in the garden, it was about four o’clock. The summer sun was unrelenting, even as its angle was starting to allow for more shade behind the house. It was time for a break. To cool himself down during the day, Elly would make his way into the basement. While the basement was significantly cooler than the rest of the house, there was another reason he wanted to go down there.
Today was the day that NASA would be landing on the Moon, and the family’s brand new color TV was in the basement. Elly needed to keep checking in to see how the mission was progressing. He sat on the green basement couch and put his glass of water on the wooden coffee table in front of him. As condensation quickly formed around the outside of the glass, he turned on the TV.
The TV’s sound came on before the cathode ray screen had time to warm up and show a picture. Elly could hear newscasters describe the status of the mission. When the screen turned on, he saw that they were describing the landing procedure over images of NASA’s mission control room in Houston. He had gone downstairs just in time. The lunar landing was imminent.
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were on a descending flight path, taking them closer and closer to the lunar surface, with each kilometer they traveled like a plane coming in for landing. They would soon land at their target in the Mare Tranquillitatis region, just above the Moon’s equator on the side facing Earth (the same side of the moon always faces Earth).
In that moment, Elly actually began to feel a bit nervous. With a background in electrical engineering, he knew how many points of failure there were in a machine as complex as the Lunar Module. Just one circuit failure or blown transistor and the astronauts might not be able to land. The entire event would be a disaster and two men would be marooned to die in space.
With the sun’s beams still blasting through the narrow basement windows, Elly listened to the voice of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) news anchor explaining that there would be no video of the actual landing. The TV cameras could only be turned on and connected to Earth once they were safely on the moon’s surface. The screen cut to a countdown clock and animation of the Lunar Module. Elly leaned forward and listened closely, cautiously, as the live audio from the astronauts played over a cartoon animation of the spacecraft descending.
He could hear Buzz Aldrin speaking with ground control in Houston, as well as to Armstrong, who was piloting the LEM. Buzz was reading out numbers from the computer, rattling off how high they still were above the surface and how much fuel was remaining. The power of those computers Buzz was reading from was unimaginable to Elly—they were the best of the best and were designed specifically to help humans fly in this strange environment on the Moon. He grew jumpier as he started thinking about the hundreds of transistors and circuits that must be operating at full capacity. After all, in his time running factories and radio repair stores, he had seen hundreds, if not thousands, of blown fuses, corroded connections, and faulty components. Knowing the nature of machines, he couldn’t help but be tense. He grabbed his glass of water, the ice cubes mostly melted away by now, and took another sip, hoping for the best.
As nervous as he was, the aspiring pilot and adventurer was still alive in Elly. This side of him wasn’t nervous at all, but actually jealous. What did it feel like to see the Moon’s surface coming increasingly closer to you? How did it feel to fly with no atmosphere? With no resistance, did it feel like the spacecraft wanted to drop like a stone? Could the astronauts feel the thrust of the descent engine? Every push of the navigation thrusters? What would they do if the main descent engine failed? The Lunar Module was like a single engine aircraft, with no backup plan if things went wrong. If an airplane experiences engine failure on Earth, pilots can glide to a safe landing thanks to atmospheric lift. But the moon has no atmosphere—if the engine failed, the Lunar Module would immediately plummet to the surface and crash.
Just as he continued to think about all of the possible electrical risks, mechanical risks, and flight risks, Elly heard Neil Armstrong interrupt a brief period of silence: “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.”
They had done it.
Finally able to relax, he leaned back into the couch and smiled. Forty-one years old, father of three, and a citizen of the world, Elly Gotz had one simple reaction: “Wow, what a moment!” Two astronauts had piloted a spacecraft to the surface of the Moon while he listened live back on Earth.
It was about 4:15 in the afternoon. The CBC newscaster informed the audience that it would be another few hours until Neil and Buzz exited the Lunar Module to explore the surface. Elly watched for a few minutes more, then finished his water, which had no ice cubes remaining, and went back upstairs.
He’d initially had planned to do a few more things around the yard, but admitted defeat when he realized he was simply too excited. It was a beautiful day, and the most exciting thing he had ever seen on TV had just happened. The kitchen upstairs was lit up with sunlight, the shine reflecting Elly’s mood perfectly.
Arguably, the most famous image of the twentieth century. This picture of Buzz Aldrin was taken by Neil Armstrong, who played photographer for much of the Apollo 11 mission.
Deciding he was indeed far too excited to go pull weeds from the garden or take on any other type of chore, he instead picked up the phone and started calling family members. He was ecstatic, but had no one to talk to in an empty house. He absolutely had to talk to somebody about what had just happened. He wanted to share what he had just seen, to talk about how amazing it was, and, ever the engineer, to make sure people appreciated the magnificence of the machinery.
Elly had spent years fixing radios and all sorts of other electronic devices. While radios are complex machines, they were nothing compared to what NASA had built to go to the Moon. Maybe, he thought, people who aren’t engineers can’t fully appreciate the technological immensity of what NASA engineers accomplished
