Born in Berlin, Germany, to the lawyer Walter Goldschlag (d. 1930) and his wife Charlotte, née Blumenthal.

The family on his fathers side were assimilated Jews and beonged middle class and included lawyers and merchants.

His father had died in 1930 due to a chronic illness contracted during WWI and his mother not having sufficient money to raise him[4] had to leave him at the orphanage in 1933[5] while she went into hiding.

After earning his master's degree in Arabic at the University of Toronto, he joined the diplomatic and foreign affairs department.

This biography of a person who has held a non-elected position in the Government of Canada is a stub.