How the seven dwarfs of Auschwitz fell under the spell of Dr Death:
The
hideous experiments carried out by Nazi Josef Mengele on seven trusting
brothers and sisters. As powerful beams of light revealed the new
arrivals at Auschwitz, the SS guards could scarcely believe their eyes.
One by one, seven tiny people were lifted off the train.
Five were women — each no taller than a girl of five, yet wearing make-up and elegant dresses. They looked like painted dolls.
Huddled
together in a circle, the seven dwarfs made no attempt to join the
teeming mass of passengers being herded up a ramp by soldiers with
alsatians straining at the leash.
Instead, one
of the male dwarfs started handing out autographed cards to the guards
who surrounded them. After all, it couldn’t hurt for them to know the
Lilliput Troupe was famed internationally for its variety shows.
Like
most of the Hungarian Jews on the train, which had taken three days to
arrive at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the dwarfs had no idea they’d just been
deposited in the Nazis’ most notorious extermination camp.
An
SS officer strode over and established they were all siblings from the
Ovitz family. Immediately, the order went out: Wake the doctor!
It
was nearly midnight on Friday, May 19, 1944, and Dr Josef Mengele was
asleep in his quarters. All the troopers on duty, however, were well
aware of his passion for collecting human ‘freaks’, including
hermaphrodites and giants.
A lone dwarf
wouldn’t have been sufficient reason to disturb his sleep, but a family —
and seven of them — why, it was just like the fairy tale!
They
were certainly right about Mengele. When told about the camp’s latest
acquisition, the good-looking 34-year-old doctor sprang out of bed.
Meanwhile,
the dwarfs watched the rest of the passengers — including their aunts,
uncles, cousins and friends — march towards a building with two chimneys
that ceaselessly poured out smoke and flames. What was this place — a
bakery?
Perla Ovitz, at 23 the youngest dwarf,
questioned a Jew in a striped jacket who had helped unload the train.
‘This is no bakery — this is Auschwitz and you’ll soon end up in the
ovens, too,’ he told her.
Suddenly, as Perla
recounted many decades later, ‘each flame looked like a human being,
flying up and dissolving in the air. We went numb, then started thinking
about the unknown man we were waiting for — if this was a graveyard,
then what was a doctor doing here?’
Had he been
asked, Mengele would have said he was conducting important genetic
research that might one day lead to a professorship.
To
that end, he felt no compunction about torturing, maiming and often
killing his unlimited supply of human specimens. His enthusiasm,
ambition and cruelty set him apart even from the other death-camp
doctors.
One of his first jobs had been to deal
with a typhus epidemic in the female camp — a problem he solved by
sending an entire barrack of 498 women to the gas chambers.
It was also his idea to kill families of gypsies for the sake of their eyeballs, which were extracted for research.
To
the Ovitz family, though, a doctor represented hope. So as soon as
Mengele arrived, they crowded around him, answering his questions
eagerly in chorus.
His excitement mounted as
they recounted their family history: their father Rabbi Shimshon Eizik, a
dwarf, had been married twice to tall women, who gave birth to seven
dwarfs and three conventionally sized siblings.
‘I now have work for 20 years,’ he exclaimed joyfully.
Mengele
whispered orders to the officer in charge. Remarkably, not only were
the seven dwarfs, their two normal-sized sisters, sister-in-law and two
of their children saved from the gas chamber that night, but so were the
families of their handyman and neighbour — who insisted they were close
relatives. In total: 22 people.
Only three
hours had passed since the arrival of their train and most of the
passengers — 3,100 out of 3,500 — were already dead. The dwarfs were
lifted on to a truck and driven away.
Theirs
was to become one of the most extraordinary survival stories of World
War II. But it would be many years before it was told, after extensive
research and interviews with Perla Ovitz and other camp survivors.
Unusually,
the heads of the Lilliput Troupe were not shaven and they were allowed
to keep their own clothes. Simon Slomowitz, the handyman, lifted them on
to their wooden bunks and performed all the tasks they couldn’t manage.
Like all the other prisoners, they lived in a barrack and ate the same watery soup, but it was clear that they’d been set apart.
Instead
of having to use the latrines, they were given the potties of dead
babies. There was also an aluminium bowl in which they had to wash every
day, as Mengele was obsessed with hygiene.
Perhaps,
they thought, he wanted them to put on a show? After all, they’d sung
and performed sketches since the early 1930s and had even appeared
before King Carol II in Bucharest.
Only the
increasingly punitive Nazi laws against Jews had put a stop to the
Lilliputs’ career. Then the day had come when they were ordered to leave
their home in the village of Rozavlea.
Anticipating
hard times ahead, they’d hidden all their valuables in a hole dug under
their parked car before packing their suitcases with stage costumes and
filling their pockets with make-up.
On the day
they were summoned to Mengele’s lab, the women carefully made up their
faces and put on their best dresses. To the emaciated inmates who saw
them led to a truck, they must have seemed like a bizarre hallucination.
The
lab looked like any ordinary clinic, with staff in white coats. All
they seemed to want at first was to take blood samples, which seemed a
small price to pay for their lives.
But the
blood-letting was repeated week after week, along with dozens of X-rays.
‘The amount of blood they took was enormous and, being feeble from
hunger, we often fainted,’ recalled Perla. ‘That didn’t stop Mengele: he
had us lie down and when we came to our senses they resumed siphoning
our blood.
‘They punctured us carelessly and
blood spurted. We often felt nauseous and vomited a lot. When we
returned to the barrack, we’d slump on the wooden bunks — but before we
had time to recover, we’d be summoned for a new cycle.’
Mengele
didn’t know what he was looking for. Far from recording any effort to
break the genetic code for dwarfism, the paperwork reveals only routine
tests for kidney problems, liver function and typhus.
Psychiatrists
bombarded the dwarfs with questions to test their intelligence, doctors
repeatedly tested them for syphilis — and boiling water, quickly
followed by freezing water, was poured into their ears.
According
to Perla, this water torture was excruciatingly painful and nearly
drove them crazy. Also alarming was the fact doctors pulled out healthy
teeth and plucked hairs from their eyelashes.
Dora
Ovitz, the full-size wife of the eldest dwarf Avram, was cross-examined
by Mengele about her sex life. As he bombarded her with increasingly
lewd questions, he was actually salivating.
Above
all, the Lilliputs dreaded suffering the same fate as two male dwarfs —
a hunchback and his son — who’d arrived in the camp three months after
them.
Having decided to send their skeletons to
a museum in Berlin, Mengele had ordered his staff to boil their bodies
over a fire until the flesh separated from the bones.
So
pleased was he with the result that he had another dwarf killed for his
skeleton — this time, the unfortunate man was dropped into a bath of
acid.
‘We’d reconciled ourselves to the thought we wouldn’t walk out from the camp,’ said Perla.
‘But the notion that our skeletons would be exhibited in Berlin was ghastly beyond words.’
That
they survived was down to the whim of the demon doctor. When the time
came for everyone in their part of the concentration camp to be gassed,
he saved them a second time by moving them to a different section.
The
Lilliputs were careful to present a cheerful face to Mengele. They
always addressed him as ‘Your Excellency’ and once sang him one of his
favourite songs: ‘Come Make Me Happy.’
He was
unfailingly polite to his seven captives, often praising them for their
appearance. ‘How beautiful you look today!’ he’d say to Frieda, the
prettiest of the dwarfs.
Flirtatiously, she’d
reply: ‘I knew that Herr Hauptsturmführer was coming, so I took great
care to make myself up in his honour.’
If
Frieda ever skimped on her beauty routine, he’d ask: ‘Are you in a bad
mood today? Why didn’t you apply your beautiful red lipstick?’
Mengele
also brought sweets and toys — belonging to children he’d killed — for
tall sister Leah’s 18-month-old son Shimshon. Malnourished and
traumatised, the boy had never cried or uttered a word.
One
day, however, he toddled towards Mengele, saying: ‘Daddy, Daddy.’ The
doctor smiled: ‘No, I’m not your father, just Uncle Mengele.’
As for Perla, she was painfully aware of what she called the devil’s charm.
‘Dr
Mengele was like a movie star, only more good-looking,’ she said.
‘Anyone could easily fall in love with him. But no one who saw him could
ever imagine that behind his beautiful face a beast was hiding.
‘But
we all knew that he was ruthless and capable of the very worst forms of
sadistic behaviour — that when he was angry he’d become hysterical and
shake with rage.
‘But if he were in a bad mood, the moment he stepped into our barrack he’d immediately calm down.
‘When he was in a good mood, people would say: “He probably visited the little ones.” ’
At twilight one day, Mengele dropped in to visit the dwarfs with a small parcel tucked under his arm.
He announced that the next day he’d be taking them on a special journey to a beautiful place.
Noticing
that their faces had gone deathly pale, he grinned. They would need to
look their best, he continued, because they would be appearing onstage
in front of some very important people.
He
left, leaving the parcel behind. The five women unwrapped it and to
their delight discovered a powder compact, rouge, bright red lipstick
with matching nail varnish, a bottle of cologne and vivid turquoise and
green eye shadows.
At dawn, on Friday,
September 1, the women helped each other dress and apply a heavy,
theatrical layer of make-up. Their glamour restored, they felt jubilant
as they were lifted on to the truck that had come to fetch them.
They
were taken straight to a large new building in the SS residential camp.
Deposited on the lawn, they were soon tucking into a hearty meal served
on fine china plates with silver cutlery.
Then,
the troupe was led on to a stage inside. The auditorium was packed with
high-ranking SS officers and Mengele was standing at the front of the
stage. As they looked at him for a cue, he suddenly turned and snapped
at them: ‘Undress!’
Aghast, with trembling
hands, they fumbled with their buttons. Once every stitch of their
finery had been removed, they stooped as they tried to hide their
breasts and genitals.
‘Straighten up!’ barked
Mengele. He was going public with his work in genetics, with a lecture
entitled: ‘Examples of the Work in Anthropological and Hereditary
Biology in the Concentration Camp.’
To
illustrate his points, he poked the trembling dwarfs with a billiard
cue, indicating the site of each of their internal organs.
His
purpose was to show the Jewish race had degenerated into a people of
dwarfs and cripples, but as he had no concrete findings, he was relying
on the naked Lilliputs to give his speech some impact.
When he’d finished, the audience rose to applaud and a swarm of SS officers climbed on to the stage to prod at the naked troupe.
Afterwards, the dwarfs were too devastated to accept refreshments.
They
arrived at the barrack in total silence — only to be greeted by their
fellow prisoners as if they’d just returned from the dead.
Mengele
continued to protect his research specimens. Not long afterwards, he
saved Avram and Micki Ovitz from the gas chamber after another Auschwitz
doctor — jealous of his rival’s success — ‘selected’ them for execution
behind his back.
It was little wonder that
when Mengele took a week’s holiday, the dwarfs were beside themselves
with fear. On his return, Frieda asked him with all the charm she could
muster: ‘Forgive me for asking, Your Excellency, but when will all this
be over so we can go home?’
Mengele frowned.
‘What do you mean, meine Liebe [my love]? I can’t go home myself. I’m
not working here for pleasure, but under orders. You’ve got nothing to
complain about!’
The end, when it came, was
swift. As word spread in January 1945 that the Russian army was
approaching, Mengele gathered up his medical reports and fled.
Seven
months later, the Ovitz family finally made it home, where they found
their gold and jewellery still buried under their car. But the village
of Rozavlea had irrevocably changed: only 50 of its 650 Jews had
returned.
In 1949, the family emigrated to
Israel, where they spent several years touring with their stage show
until ill health forced them to retire.
By the time Perla told her incredible story of the seven dwarfs of Auschwitz, the rest of her family had died.
Mengele,
who’d escaped justice by fleeing to South America, drowned in 1979. Had
he been caught, Perla said she doubted he would have apologised for
what he did to her family.
‘But if the judges had asked me if he should be hanged, I’d have told them to let him go.
‘I was saved by the grace of the devil — God will give Mengele his due.’
Perla died peacefully, aged 80, on September 9, 2001.
Extracted from Giants: The Dwarfs Of Auschwitz by Yehuda Koren and Eilat Negev (The Robson Press.
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