The Seven Dwarfs of Auschwitz

When the Ovitz family arrived at Auschwitz, the SS Guards were astounded. Seven people were lifted off the train one by one, five were women, not much taller than a girl of 5, yet they wore elegant dresses and make-up which made them look like painted dolls. They huddled in a circle where they made no attempt to join the other passengers being rounded up. Instead, one of them started handing out autograph cards for they were the famed Lilliput Troupe known for their variety shows.

Like most of the Hungarian Jews, they had been on the train which took 3 days to arrive at Auschwitz-Birkenau, but the dwarfs had no idea that they had just been deposited in the Nazi's most notorious extermination camp.

One of the SS officers went over and established that they were all siblings from the Ovitz family. Immediately, he gave the order to call Dr Mengele: "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.
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.

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?"

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.
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.

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. 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 syphoning 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."


Over a long period of time, the family were tested, experimented on and studied. In 1949, after their horrific adventure and the liberation of the camp, 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 had escaped justice by fleeing to South America,  is believed to have 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.

Sources:

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGJf5WWZDtnYkuMYpa6q_UX83EaP5A5R_9n5_U-xNU8_6AoJYtz5Srctq9LqBhAr3s1mfW02AjX3PeTALyAVfRPX5GJ5PQ2VDYQ45inRJGoeF13GP4lyx0eCXiBr02OWF7tzBvalCjYuI/s400/ovitz.JPG

The Ovitz family on their arrival