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Issue Date: 5 / 2005 |
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How a Troupe of Dwarfs Escaped the Holocaust
Vera Laska
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IN OUR HEARTS WE WERE GIANTS: THE REMARKABLE STORY OF THE LILLIPUT TROUPE--A DWARF FAMILY’S SURVIVAL OF THE HOLOCAUST
By Yehuda Koren and Eilat Negev
New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2004
pp. XIII + 306, $25.00, illustrated.
This is an informative and instructive book in general, enlightening about the lives of a segment of our fellow men and women we would hardly count upon. Dwarfs are not freaks or mirabilia monstrorum or monstrous wonders, but mirabilia hominum or human wonders. It is the story of the Ovitz family of Transylvania in Romania, consisting of ten siblings, seven of whom were dwarfs, five women and two men; three siblings were of normal height; one of the latter died in a labor camp.
The Ovitz family formed an entertainment troupe called the Lilliput Troupe that toured mostly Eastern Europe but maintained their headquarters in the village of Rozavlea in Transylvania where 20 percent of the population were Jews. The Ovitzes were Orthodox Jews. The likelihood of an offspring of a dwarf being of normal height is 50 percent. One dwarf couple is known to have had fourteen children of normal height. None of the Ovitz dwarf women, however, had children. One male dwarf, Avram, had a normal-height son.
In the 1930s they started their Lilliput Troupe, singing, dancing, playing instruments, and producing skits. They were very successful, performing not only in Romania but also in the neighboring countries, traveling in their own bus. When the youngest dwarf girl, Perla, was nine years old, the siblings became orphans. There was a thirty-five-year age difference between her and her oldest sister Rozika.
Dwarfs played a role since ancient times as entertainers or court jesters. In ancient Egypt they were venerated, and one dwarf named Bes was considered a god. Caliphs and tsars are known to have had dwarfs. Peter the Great threw a party for seventy-two dwarfs to celebrate the wedding of his favorite dwarf in 1710. Dwarfs are often depicted in royal paintings. The Ovitz troupe was also invited to the palace of the Romanian King Karol II in Bucharest. Some museums hold dwarf skeletons, and the London Royal College of Surgeons' skeletonization process was also practiced by Nazi doctors, supported by the government.
In 1944, Nazi German troops occupied Hungary and within it Transylvania. Jewish men were forced into labor camps, Jews had to wear yellow stars, and in the spring deportation started.
The dwarfs were first forced into ghettos, then shipped to Auschwitz. Of the twenty-two chapters of the book, nine are devoted to the dwarfs' stay in Auschwitz and as part of Dr. Josef Mengele's experiments. While the experiments are not described in detail, the dwarfs' sufferings come in for minute attention. In spite of all their sufferings, the Ovitz dwarfs liked Mengele because they considered him their savior; it was his experiments that kept them alive. They had various chemicals injected into their eyes, probably to change their eye coloring. Their ears were flooded with boiling and ice cold water, for reasons unknown. They were subjected to various and rough gynecological examinations, the purpose of which was not explained to them.
Aside from the floodlight thrown on the experiences of the Ovitz dwarfs, the book offers a treasure trove of information on additional aspects of life in Auschwitz. The Lilliputs' cousin Regina joined them in the camp. There is considerable secondary information on the Czech and Gypsy Family Camps. The Gypsy Camp held six thousand inhabitants, and when they tried to rebel, they were sent to labor camps, all to the annoyance of Mengele, who lost his specimens. Many of them ended up as skeletons for further study. Close to three thousand Gypsies were gassed in August of 1944 in Auschwitz. Mengele celebrated his second honeymoon there, and received the War Cross of Merit, second class, with Swords, for his work. He ruled in the men's infirmary over his three hundred fifty Jewish victims, two hundred fifty of them twins and dwarfs.
In the morbid surroundings of Auschwitz, the Lilliput Ovitzes in their colorful dresses, made-up faces, and cheerful manners offered an incredible phantasmagoric look. Yet they seemed less depressed than most inmates and remained optimistic and hopeful. Numerous individual episodes are interspersed amongst the stories about the dwarfs, but there was no doubt that they were Mengele's favorite subjects. The Auschwitz archives state that Mengele killed eleven female dwarfs on December 7, 1944; on the other hand, it is known that he transferred the Ovitz women to a new location as part of the reorganization of the camp.
Finally, on January 17, 1945, Mengele packed up his files and drove away in his own car. The whereabouts of his files remains unknown. Ten days later, the Russian troops liberated Auschwitz and the remaining 5,800 inmates, the rest having been evacuated earlier. Among those welcoming the liberation were the Ovitz siblings, as well as 108 pairs of twins.
After much adventure and complications, the dwarfs made it to their home in Rozavlea by August 1945. Of the six hundred fifty Jews of the village, only fifty returned.
Eventually, in 1949, the family settled in Haifa, Israel. Here, they continued with their entertainment program, and later ran movie houses before retiring. In the 1980s and 1990s, most of the Ovitz dwarfs died. The last one to remain alive was the youngest, Perla, who died in 2001 at the age of close to eighty-one.
The Eichmann trial in 1961 in Jerusalem brought the Holocaust to the surface of historical memory. The television show Holocaust, fictionalized as it was, entered it into the homes all over the globe. In 1964, Mengele's two doctorates were annulled. He lived in South America; he was tried in absentia at Yad Vachem in Jerusalem in 1985. The Lilliputs again testified but did not wish Mengele hanged, because in spite of all the tortures and experiments he saved them from the gas chamber.
As the bearer of unique information, the book is a valuable contribution to the literature of Auschwitz, including Birkenau, and should be part of all Holocaust libraries as well as all World War II collections.
© 1999 International Journal on World Peace
Vera Laska is a professor of history at Regis College in
Weston, Massachusetts.
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