Michael de Laine

By Michael de Laine, the Copenhagen Voice, 27 January 2010

Symbiosis was the key to how a Jewish family with many dwarfs survived the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz and the notorious Dr Josef Mengele. Jews, dwarfs, gypsies and homosexuals were among those annihilated in the Holocaust, but the Ovitz family stuck together, humoured Mengele and were subjected to his experiments – the doctor dependent on the family as objects of scientific interest, the family dependent on his interest in them for their survival.

Today is the 65th anniversary of the liberation by Soviet troops of the Nazis’ concentration camp at Auschwitz. Among the survivors of the Holocaust was the Ovitz family, Romanian-born Jewish circus actors/traveling musicians who performed under the name the Lilliput Troupe.

They sang and played music using small instruments and performed all over Romania, Hungary and Czechoslovakia in the 1930s and 1940s. The Ovitzes sang in Yiddish, Hungarian, Romanian, Russian and German. Most of them were dwarfs, and the taller relatives helped backstage.

At the start of World War II, the Ovitz family had 12 members, seven of them dwarfs. When Hungary seized Northern Transylvania in September 1940, new racial laws banned Jewish artists from entertaining non-Jews, but the Ovitzes were able to continue touring until 15 May 1944, when all twelve family members were deported to Auschwitz.

Here they attracted Mengele’s attention. The doctor – known as the Angel of Death – separated the Ovitzes from the rest of the camp inmates to add them to his collection of test subjects. He was curious about the fact that the family included both dwarfs and taller members, partly because dwarfs were harder to find than other kinds of test subjects, such as twins. To keep the family healthy, Mengele ensured they had better and more hygienic living conditions, better food and their own bedclothes; they were also allowed them to keep their own clothes, so they did not need to wear stripes or the yellow ‘Jude’ badges.

Like many other camp inmates, the Ovitzes were subjected to various tests. Mengele ordered them to strip naked so he could present them to a group of visiting dignitaries; he also made a film of them for Adolf Hitler’s amusement. Fearing for their lives, the Ovitzes humored Mengele and sang German songs – some written by Mengele – for him when ordered to do so.

The Red Army took the family to the Soviet Union, where they lived in a refugee camp for some time before they were released and travelled back to their home village. They found their home looted and travelled to Belgium. In May 1949, they emigrated to Israel, settled in Haifa, and began their tours again, being quite successful and packing large concert halls. In 1955, they retired and bought a cinema hall.

This is the story depicted by Eilat Negev and Yehuda Koren, authors of ‘I hjertet var vi kæmper’. This is the Danish version of ‘In Our Hearts We Were Giants’, their book about the Ovitz family – the Lilliput Troupe – which survived the Holocaust.

Askholms Forlag published the Danish-language book (ISBN: 978-8791679-17-9) today – International Holocaust Memorial Day.