Ovitz (family)
The Ovitz family was a Romanian artist family who survived Joseph Mengele's “experiments” in the Auschwitz concentration camp .
history
The diminutive Rabbi Shimshon Isaac Ovitz (1868–1923) fathered a total of ten children with his two wives Brana (died 1901) and Batia-Bertha, seven of whom were affected by pseudoachondroplasia : Rozika, Franzeska, Frieda, Elizabeth, Perla, Miki and Avraham. The daughters Leah and Seren-Sara as well as the son Arie, however, achieved normal body measurements. The small siblings formed the "Liliput Troupe" in the 1930s and performed with music, theater and dance performances in numerous countries in Eastern and Central Europe.
In March 1944 the Jewish Ovitz family, who were in Hungary at the time and who had long veiled their origins, were arrested. After they had apparently been able to travel to their hometown of Sighet again , the siblings were deported to Auschwitz , where they arrived on May 19, 1944. Mengele sorted them out at the ramp and kept the entire family, including the tall members and a number of people who posed as relatives of the Ovitz family, for his experiments . This saved her from starvation or gassing, but it was cruelly abused. Mengele also made a film about the siblings, whose whereabouts are unknown.
On January 27, 1945, the Ovitz family witnessed the liberation of the camp. In August the siblings returned to Rozavlea , where they had lived before they were arrested. The siblings found their home in Sighet looted. They later lived in Antwerp for two years , and finally emigrated to Israel in 1949 , where they continued their stage career with a piece called “Dance of Death”, among other things.
From 1955, the siblings operated two cinemas in Haifa . The youngest of the sisters, Perla Ovitz, died in 2001 as the last member of the former "Liliput troupe".
Book and film
The Israeli journalists Yehuda Koren and Eilat Negev wrote a book about the fate of the family that has been translated into numerous languages, but, according to one critic, reads "like a penny book". The Israeli director Shahar Rosen later made a film about Perla Ovitz's search for the film made in the concentration camp after the war with the title “Liebe Perla”.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=16585335
- ↑ http://www.bz-berlin.de/archiv/mengeles-zwerge-article173452.html
- ↑ Annette Großbongardt: HOLOCAUST: "Come to Mengele" . In: Der Spiegel . No. 42 , 1999 ( online - Oct. 18, 1999 ).
- ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original dated November 3, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ http://buecher.hagalil.com/econ/ovitz.htm
