George Elbaum was born in Warsaw, Poland on August 20, 1938, one year before Hitler invaded Poland. His parents were integrated Polish lawyers, and spoke Polish in the home. 

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Within weeks of the outbreak of the war, George's father was called to reserve duty in the army and never returned. Acutely aware of the danger she and her son were in, George's mother dyed her hair blonde and purchased the identification documents of a Catholic woman who had died. In 1942, she smuggled George out of the Warsaw ghetto before paying various Polish Catholic families to hide and raise him. He only learned he was Jewish later on.

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In 1945, George was reunited with his mother, the only other surviving member of his family. They planned to go to Israel, but ultimately immigrated to America in 1949. For 60 years, George was reluctant to share his story. He earned an undergraduate degree, two Master's Degrees, and a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), leading him to a career designing rockets. 

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In 2009, upon viewing "Paper Clips," a documentary chronicling a Tennessee middle school's unique attempt to honor Holocaust victims, George was moved to share his story with the world, including in his books Neither Yesterdays Nor Tomorrows and Yesterdays Revisited. He and his wife Mimi Jensen live in San Francisco, but George makes frequent trips to Seattle to visit his children and grandchildren. George is a member of the Holocaust Center's Speakers Bureau.