Ovitz family
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The Ovitz family were a family of Jewish dwarfs and traveling musicians who survived imprisonment at the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II.
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[edit] Origin
The Ovitz family originated from the Romanian village of Rozavlea. They are descendants of Shimson Eizik Ovitz (1868-1923), badchan entertainer and wandering rabbi. He fathered ten children in total seven of them dwarfs(afflicted with spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia) in two marriages, in addition to taller ones. The children from his first marriage to Brana Fruchter, she was of average height, were both dwarfs, Rozika and Franzika. Shimson's second wife Batia Bertha Husz, also average height, produced the following children: Avram, a dwarf, Freida, a dwarf, Sarah, average height, Micki, a dwarf, Leah, average height, Elizabeth, a dwarf, Arie, average height and Piroska also known as Pearla, a dwarf. Batia gave her family one piece of advise that would stay with them for the rest of their lives, and that ultimately saved their lives. She said "through thick and thin, never separate. stick together, guard each other, and live for one another." The one brother who did not follow his mother's advice was killed in a labor camp, and his wife, her parents, and their newborn daughter were killed in Auschwitz.
The children founded their own ensemble, The Lilliput Troupe. They sang and played using small instruments and performed all over Romania, Hungary and Czechoslovakia in the 1930s and 1940s. The taller relatives helped backstage. The Ovitzes sang in Yiddish, Hungarian, Romanian, Russian and German. When they were not touring, they lived in a single house with their spouses. At the time of the World War II, there were 12 family members, seven of them dwarfs.
When Hungary seized northern Transylvania in September 1940, the new race laws banned Jewish artists from entertaining non-Jews. Though the Ovitzes were observant Jews, they obtained papers that omitted the fact that they were Jewish and went on their tours until 1944. On May 15, 1944 all the twelve members were deported to Auschwitz. One taller brother escaped the round up but was later arrested and executed.
[edit] Into the death camp
In the camp the Ovitzes attracted attention of the camp doctor Josef Mengele, the Angel of Death, who collected curiosities for his own experiments of heredity. He separated the Ovitzes from the rest to add them to his test subjects. He was curious of the fact that the family included both dwarfs and taller members. Eleven other prisoners claimed to be their relatives and Mengele moved all of them to his "human zoo."
Mengele arranged special living quarters for his dwarfs so he could monitor them and keep them safe. In order to keep them healthy for his human experimentation, he arranged them more hygienic conditions, better food and their own bedclothes. Mengele allowed them to keep their own clothes. He forced the taller members of the group to carry the dwarfs to the experiments. Mengele wanted to spare his group of dwarfs because they were harder to find than other kinds of test subjects, like twins.
The Ovitzes - like many other inmates - were subjected to various tests. Mengele's physicians extracted bone marrow and pulled out teeth and hair to find signs of hereditary disease. They poured hot and cold water to their ears and blinded them with chemical drops. Gynecologists inspected the married women. 18-month-old Shinshon Ovitz was put through the worst ordeals because he had taller parents and was prematurely born; Mengele drew blood from him from veins behind his ears and from his fingers. The Ovitzes also witnessed two newcomer dwarfs being killed and boiled to bones to be exhibited in a museum. Once Mengele ordered them to strip naked to present them to a group of visiting dignitaries. He also made a film of them for Hitler's amusement. Fearing for their lives, the Ovitzes humored Mengele and sang him German songs when he ordered them to.
They expected to be killed after Mengele had finished his experiments. Fortunately, all of them lived to see the liberation of Auschwitz in January 27, 1945. The Red Army took them to the Soviet Union where they lived in a refugee camp for some time before they were released.
[edit] Aftermath
The Ovitzes traveled on foot for seven months to their home village. They found their home looted, moved first to the village of Sighet and later 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.
Descendants of the dwarf men of the family were born taller; the women did not become pregnant due to their small pelvises. The firstborn of the dwarfs, Rozika Ovitz, died in 1984 at the age of 98. The last adult dwarf survivor of the family, Perla Ovitz, died in 2001.
[edit] References
- Yehuda Koren & Eilat Negev: In Our Hearts We Were Giants - the Remarkable story of the Lilliput Troupe (2004)
- Standing Tall at Auschwitz (2006) - a documentary film about the Ovitz family [1]
