Giants E-Book

Eilat Negev

• Herausgeber: The Robson Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Seitenzahl: 416

Beschreibung

During the 1930s and 40s the Lilliput Troupe, a beloved and successful family of singers and actors, dazzled with their vaudeville programme and unique performances. The only all-dwarf show of the time, their small stature earned them fame - and, ironically, ultimately saved their lives. As Hitler's war descended, the Ovitz family - seven of whom were dwarfs - was plunged into the horrors of the darkest moments in modern history. Descending from the cattle train into the death camp of Auschwitz, they were separated from other Jewish victims on the orders of one Dr Joseph Mengele, the 'Angel of Death'. Obsessed with eugenics, Dr Mengele carried out a series of loathsome experiments on the family and developed a disturbing fondness for his human lab-rats, so much so that when the Russian army liberated Auschwitz, all members of the family - the youngest, a baby boy just eighteen months old; the oldest, a 58-year-old woman - were still alive. Based on exhaustive research and interviews with Perla Ovitz, the troupe's last-surviving member, and scores of Auschwitz survivors, authors Yehuda Koren and Eilat Negev deftly describe the moving and inspirational story of this remarkable family and their indomitable will to survive.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Title Page

Family Tree

Foreword by Warwick Davis

Prologue

One: Transylvania, 1866

Two: Rozavlea, 1923

Three: Rozavlea, 1930

Four: On the Road, 1931–1940

Five: Hungary, 1940

Six: Maramureş, Easter 1944

Seven: Auschwitz-Birkenau, May 1944

Eight: Auschwitz-Birkenau, June 1944

Nine: Auschwitz-Birkenau, July 1944

Ten: Auschwitz-Birkenau, August 1944

Eleven: Auschwitz-Birkenau, September 1944

Twelve: Auschwitz-Birkenau, October 1944

Thirteen: Auschwitz-Birkenau, November 1944

Fourteen: Auschwitz-Birkenau, December 1944

Fifteen: Auschwitz-Birkenau, January 1945

Sixteen: On the Road, 1945

Seventeen: Sighet–Antwerp, 1945–1949

Eighteen: Haifa, 1949–1954

Nineteen: Haifa, 1955–1979

Twenty: Haifa, 1980–1992

Twenty-One: Haifa, 1993–2001

Epilogue: Rozavlea–Auschwitz, September 2000

Sources

Plates

Copyright

THE OVITZ FAMILY TREE

FOREWORD BY WARWICK DAVIS

Several years ago, I was researching the subject of short people in entertainment for a potential film or documentary idea. My doing this was also borne out of a personal curiosity about such performers, and why they did what they did. Among tales of medieval court jesters, Tom Thumb and the dwarf town in Coney Island, I found the inspirational story of the Ovitz family. My research was not thorough or in-depth at that point, but what I did discover about the family left a lasting impression.

In the spring of 2012, I was approached by a television producer who wanted me to tell the story of the Ovitz family for a documentary. This was one of those offers that needed no consideration and I agreed to it immediately. I remembered what I’d read about the family of seven dwarfs all those years ago and how amazing I thought their story was.

Before production started, I wanted to research more thoroughly the family, their lives and their ordeal at the hands of Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, but I was stopped. The director of the documentary wanted this to be a journey of discovery for me, as well as for the viewer, so I closed the textbooks and opened my mind.

In October 2012, I set off to Romania and to the village of Rozavlea, where the Ovitz family were from. I spoke to people who knew them and visited the house where they all lived together.

One of the most pleasing things I discovered about the ‘Lilliput Troupe’, as they were known, was that they were professional performers through and through. These were not seven dwarfs who went up onstage as some sort of novelty act – these were proper entertainers who just happened to be short. This really resonated with me. I started my acting career at the age of eleven, getting a part in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi because I was three feet six inches tall. It wasn’t because I was a great actor; it was simply because I was the right height for the job. However, even at that early age, I realised that to sustain this as a career I would have to focus on my performance and that being short should not be my selling point.

Not only are the Ovitzes inspiring as performers, but as people too. They survived Auschwitz, the notorious Nazi death camp, by sticking together, supporting each other and never giving up hope.

On a cold, bleak day in late November 2012, I went to Auschwitz II (Birkenau) to film the final sequence for the documentary. Actually being there had a really profound effect on me. I was able to stand where the Ovitzes stood, see the things they saw, in particular the view of the chimneys from the crematorium that Perla Ovitz had described seeing after disembarking from the train onto ‘the ramp’. I also went to the accommodation block where the Ovitzes had spent much of their time in Auschwitz. I took two handmade tiaras that belonged to Perla and Elizabeth, part of their stage costume that had been loaned to me by the authors of this book. I laid the tiaras there for a few minutes as a mark of respect for the family, and a symbol of their triumphant survival. It was a very poignant moment.

My only wish is that I could have met Micki, Elizabeth, Perla, Rozika, Franziska, Avram and Frieda. I would like to have been able to get to know them, relate to them and find out where they found the strength and courage to survive their time in Auschwitz. However, Yehuda Koren and Eilat Negev have allowed me the next best thing by writing this book.

It manages to convey all the vibrancy, passion and hope that these seven wonderful souls gave to the world. They should never be forgotten.

It leaves me both inspired and humbled. Thank you.

Warwick Davis

December 2012

PROLOGUE

There’s a long pause after the chime echoes inside. No ray of light sneaks from under the door. No movement. No muffled noises disturb the quiet afternoon.

Two peepholes, one above the other, catch the eye. The lower is just thirty inches above the ground. Until not long ago, Perla Ovitz would drag herself and peek out, trying to guess by the look of the trousers or dress hem if it was a friend or foe. Nowadays, confined to her bedroom, she’s too weak to make the journey. Her vigorous voice erupts from a loudspeaker in the hallway; it demands identification. Only then is there a buzz, and you can push the heavy brown door open. You blink in the dusky corridor. You are not sure how to continue, for fear of slipping or bumping into concealed furniture, or worse, trampling over the hostess. She’s less than three feet tall, and you might squash her unintentionally.

Her voice is your compass, guiding you forward. You grope blindly towards a diminutive silhouette that clings to the doorway of the dimly lit room. She waits at the threshold in a full-length majestic crimson dress, and allows her visitor to tiptoe past. You step carefully inside. Only then, she waddles in.

It is her bedroom. The legs of the double bed have been sawn off and, although it is almost lying on the floor, a small stool stands next to it, to enable her climb into sleep. Beyond a kindergarten table and chairs is a child-high washbasin. From your towering angle, there’s not much difference in her height if she’s standing up or sitting on the edge of the bed. Your first impulse is to shrink down, so as not to dwarf her with your presence. She nods towards the normal-sized sofa beside her bed. You take care to keep your feet on the ground, as crossing your legs will push your shoes straight into her face.

The raven-black hair of the ageless doll-like lady is carefully combed back, and held in place by a velvet bow, in old-fashioned Hollywood style. She’s theatrically made up at all hours, her cheeks are rouged, her nails are lacquered shiny red. A pair of earrings, a necklace and rings ornament her. ‘As long as you breathe, you should look your best. I don’t want people to pity me’ is a recurrent motto of hers.

She enchants with her dazzling smile and her bubbly talk is studded with unexpected aphorisms: ‘a beaten dog dreads even the kindest people’ is how she excuses her cautiousness. She spends most of her time sitting on her petite chair or reclining, dressed, on her covered bed, as these days she can stand no more than a minute or two unaided.

She’s on her own most of the day, and needs everything to be easily accessible – a packet of chocolate cookies and a plastic box of sliced apples lie on the bed should she get hungry. A thermos with water waits within reach.

She can’t move without her cane, which serves as an extended hand, to pull, press, push. Tiny stools scattered through the house allow her a brief rest in her movements around the flat. All the light switches have been lowered to her height. The kitchen has a knee-high stove and a special mechanism allows her to open the refrigerator door with a push of her cane. All the food is stored on the bottom shelf.

Vases that stand tall as her hold abundant bouquets of silk and plastic flowers, in her favourite colours: sharp violets, soft pinks. A heavy red curtain at the wide entrance to the living room is pulled to both sides and gathered in thick cords, as if a show were about to begin. Forty-five years have passed since Perla Ovitz took her last bow, but the stage stays with her still. Once, when all her family was still around, she loved the lights: she even flooded herself with them off stage, at home. Now, trapped alone in this big empty apartment, she seeks the economy and safety of dimmed lamps and half shadows.

Perla’s memories, though, remain vivid in their glories and their horrors. Hers is a true story of seven dwarfs, with no benevolent Snow White but a beast. While reading like a fairy tale, it moves into some of the darkest corners of hell human beings have ever experienced.

ONE

TRANSYLVANIA, 1866

The tale begins with giants.

In long gone days, it is said, in hilly northern Transylvania, the Dolhai Valley was strewn with tribes of giants. For ages upon ages since the creation, they lived and prospered and roamed the earth. And then came the deluge, and they all fled up to the sleek peaks of the mountains. There, one by one they perished, and when the waters receded, the sole survivors emerged: a giant and his daughter, Roza Rozalina. Her eyes black as coal, her hair red as flame and as long as the sadness of the fir trees. Sorrowfully she wandered through the valley.

‘Father,’ she sighed, ‘I’m withering with loneliness, will I ever find a mate?’ She headed towards the Iza River and, daydreaming, strolled along the bank. All of a sudden, she spotted tiny creatures slipping between the grass blades. Roza Rozalina was astonished: never had she seen creatures so similar to her, and yet so small. She picked up a handful and nestled them in her apron. These moving toy-like creatures would rescue her from boredom, she thought. She examined them closely; one in particular caught her eye. He was handsome as the moon and appeared to be less frightened than the others. Her cheeks blushed as she felt the pangs of love.

When she showed her catch to her father, he was alarmed: ‘Alas, my daughter, our time is up! These tiny creatures will inherit the earth. Return them immediately to their place!’ But Roza Rozalina was incapable of obeying. Soaked in tears, she begged the Almighty to tie her fate to that of the small, handsome brave one. And the Almighty shrunk her a little and stretched him a lot, until they became in size like twins. Eventually their descendants filled the land. They named the place Rozavlea after their giant, ancestral mother.

In that sleepy little Romanian village, the ancient legend has been passed on from one generation to the next. Every August, the roughly 7,000 peasants who live there celebrate the festival of Roza Rozalina, with the schoolchildren staging the story. And in the same village, so proud of its legendary giantess matriarch, a real dwarf was born in 1866.

It was the third pregnancy for Frieda Ovitz and, having already given birth to a healthy daughter and son, she was distressed to discover that her baby had stopped moving inside her. In that remote part of the world, she could only take recourse to prayer or an amulet, or the hope of a miracle. Being an Orthodox Jewish woman, she sought the advice of her rabbi.

‘Your child will live,’ he assured her, safely glancing at her belly from behind the table that separated them, ‘but he won’t grow tall.’ Heartbroken, Frieda and her husband Leib decided to try halting destiny by naming their newborn son ‘Shimshon Eizik’, after Samson, the biblical giant. The first years passed without apparent complications and the parents began to believe they had been spared. But when the child reached the age of seven, even they had to admit that he had long since stopped growing. They probed each other’s memory and they asked their elders. As far back as anyone could remember, in all their family history, there had never been anyone who had not grown tall. Little Shimshon Eizik was shuttled between doctors, healers and sages; he was prescribed medications and charms, spells and potions. But to no avail – they added not a millimetre to his stature. Frieda gave birth to two more boys; she was relieved when they passed the fateful age and continued growing normally.

Like the rest of Transylvania, Rozavlea was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The peasants of that rural area were wretchedly poor, with whatever limited opportunities there were certainly out of reach for a three-foot-tall youth like Shimshon Eizik. He could never hope to lift an axe, or cut a tree, or push a plough, and every farm animal was an immense and menacing monster. When Frieda and Leib Ovitz realised their son would never be able to support himself by physical labour, they invested in his schooling instead. Furnished with tutors, he excelled in his studies, gilding his path through life with brightness and good nature.

As a teenager, he tried to come to terms with his lot. The sages of the Halacha, the ancient Jewish code of law, were aware that the sight of human malformations could evoke scorn and derision. Shimshon Eizik thus found solace in the Halachic imperative that if one sees a black man, a red man or an albino, a giant, a crooked-faced man or a dwarf, one should say, ‘Blessed be God, who alters man’. In this way, the negative response to disfigurement was channelled instead into admiration for God’s diverse powers of creation. Traditionally, the blessing was recited only on one’s first encounter with the deformed person, as it was meant to overcome the initial repulsion and treat the ‘altered’ as an equal.

But when Shimshon Eizik read further into the holy texts, he was upset to learn that they defined a dwarf as a cripple, and thus disqualified him from certain functions only normal-bodied men were allowed to perform. Even if born to a line of holy priests, a dwarf was, for instance, never allowed to serve in the temple. So a forlorn Shimshon Eizik realised that in spite of an apparent tolerance for anomalies, Judaism tended to exalt those blessed with a perfect body.

Furthermore, Jewish folk tales often portrayed dwarfism as a punishment for some wrongdoing or sin. Sometimes it could also represent the lesser of two evils. In one old tale, a childless couple frequents the cemetery to beseech God for offspring. One day, in the midst of their weeping and pleas, an angel descends to them from heaven. ‘God has heard your prayer, and granted your wish,’ the angel tells them, ‘but you must choose: you can have either a son who will grow no larger than a pea or a tall, healthy daughter who will leave you and convert to Christianity at the age of thirteen.’ The couple does not hesitate: ‘Let him be as small as a pea.’

Dwarfs, however, could also serve as symbols of distinction and merit, as in the case of Rabbi Gadiel, who has been immortalised by author S. Y. Agnon. A kind of Jewish Agnus Dei, Gadiel the Dwarf heroically sacrificed himself to save his community from blood libel – the accusation that his congregation had murdered a Christian child to acquire blood for the baking of unleavened Passover bread. And yet, before the advent of modern genetics, the third-century Talmud sternly warned that ‘Giants should not marry each other, as they will give birth to a flagpole, and midgets should not couple, as they will produce a thumb.’

Tiny in stature – no taller than a boy of five – but at the same time a lively and self-confident nineteen-year-old, Shimshon Eizik Ovitz was searching for an average-sized bride. In a deeply religious society which valued learning, Shimshon’s excellence in rabbinical studies and his piety compensated for his physical deficiency. He could offer his bride the prospect of a better livelihood, along with the community respect he enjoyed as an educated person. Nevertheless, the choice of eligible spouses was meagre, as only about 200 Jews lived in Rozavlea and no more than a few thousand in the neighbouring villages, the Jews then totalling just 20 per cent of the population. After much searching, the local matchmaker suggested eighteen-year-old Brana Gold, from the nearby village of Moisei. As usual in a prearranged marriage, Brana did not have much say in the matter.

For one or another reason, Shimshon Eizik decided to discontinue his studies. By then, not only had he succeeded in overcoming any feelings of shame and unease for his own body, which created a stir wherever he went, but he had also learned to manipulate public curiosity and transform mockery into adoration. His audience would soon forget his size and shape, captivated instead by his quick tongue and charisma.

The Jewish communities of the region preserved an older, traditional way of life, resisting modern, liberal trends. There was no official job that the community could offer him, not even as a schoolteacher, since he would be the mock of the class. But he harnessed his eloquence and the attraction generated by his odd appearance and slipped easily into the cultural role of badchan or merrymaker – a colourful, virtually indispensable figure at wedding festivals, occasions which provided a harsh life its most joyful moments. Life, in fact, stood still when the community celebrated nuptials, which were often as lavish as carnivals, and which gave a rare chance for people to let their hair down in an acceptable way.

During the wedding feast, the badchan would entertain the guests with drollery, riddles and anecdotes. Only a learned person, with a deep knowledge of the wedding protocol and a knack for organisation, could orchestrate such a complex enterprise involving hundreds of guests. All in all, the creation of a new family was an event that called for perfection: opulent food served with the choicest tableware, eaten while wearing ravishing clothes and listening to the finest orchestra. Though it was a conservative, superstitious community, fearful of the ‘evil eye’ which could damage the health of expected offspring, Shimshon Eizik Ovitz’s deformity did not deter potential clients from hiring him: his skills had made him famous throughout the region, and beyond.

Months before the wedding, the fathers would book him for the week. They would negotiate his fee, cover his travel expenses and arrange his lodgings. In the weeks leading up to the wedding, Ovitz prepared for the occasion by gathering information about the newlyweds, their parents and the community dignitaries. He would then write songs and ditties based on family histories, assorted facts and anecdotes, rumours and gossip, all aiming at a good laugh. At the occasion itself, Ovitz appeared in the decorated courtyard dressed smartly in a black suit and hat and carrying a small cane. Before the guests arrived, his assistant, who always travelled with him, lifted him onto a chair standing on a table which served as his podium. From there, as a master of ceremonies, he would make his audience shed tears one moment, roar with laughter the next. With his ditties, he encouraged both bride and her all-female entourage to weep, for his verse offered them a cathartic antidote to the fears and apprehensions of an uncertain future:

Cry out your eyes, O graceful bride,

Your diamond tears enhance your charm.

Now is the time to wail out loud,

As soon you’ll become a wife.

Ovitz thus expressed his sympathy for both the young bride and groom, each having to depart a familiar, secure childhood home to live with a person practically unknown to them. In his sermon, he would remind them of their respective conjugal roles and responsibilities. But the tension was broken immediately after the taking of vows and declaration of man and wife. Now Ovitz would put on his funny face and work hard to create a jovial mood, encouraging the guests to dance until they dropped. From time to time he announced a special guest and offered a witty verse about him and praised the gift he had brought. As a jester, Ovitz was allowed to toss little barbs of irony at the community’s hypocrites and misers.

Shimshon Eizik Ovitz was an earnest jester. He amused his audience with puns and limericks based on familiar quotes from Talmudic thought. He gauged the mood of the wedding guests and told the orchestra which tunes to play. He showered witticisms upon the grandmothers of the brides as they whirled in their customary dance, after which it was the men’s turn, the revelry going non-stop until the early hours of the morning. When he could, he would grab moments of rest and slump into his chair, for Ovitz’s small feet and short legs provided only meagre support.

The morally strict Jewish society in Eastern Europe at the end of the nineteenth century allowed entertainment only on certain holidays and festivals; the theatre was banned as indecent. The wandering badchans were, in essence, the pioneering actors of the Jewish world, the founders of Yiddish theatre. They enjoyed great popularity because they ministered to a basic human need: release. Years later, when Jewish orthodoxy had lost its grip, Ovitz’s children would follow in his footsteps by establishing their own vaudeville troupe, which would take the entertainment first offered in religious ceremonies onto the stages of theatre halls, all for the sake of pure fun.

On 2 November 1886, Shimshon Eizik Ovitz was lost in prayer when he heard the first cry from the bedroom. Peszele Fogel, the midwife, emerged and announced that he had a daughter. They named her Rozika. When the toddler began walking, she swayed from side to side like a duck. Shimshon Eizik Ovitz recognised the dreaded signs all too well. On 27 January 1889, Franziska was born, and she too proved to be a dwarf like her father and sister. If Shimshon and Brana feared the mark of heredity would strike their progeny again and again, they had to suppress it and obey the biblical command to procreate. A daughter, Mancie, and a son, Judah, soon followed, but they both died in their first year and took the secret of their future growth to their tomb.

As a merrymaker, Ovitz would impress his audience so much with his Talmudic wisdom that before and after the wedding people would approach him with various religious and personal dilemmas. Many of the region’s Jewish communities were so small they could not afford a rabbi, and the scholarly Ovitz filled the gap. He moulded himself into the rabbinic role, dressing and behaving like a sage. In fairy tales dwarfs grow long beards, but in real life most of them decline to do so, as it makes them look even shorter. But Ovitz groomed his beard to look respectable.

Gradually he stopped performing as a wedding jester, moving into his new role as an esteemed, wandering rabbi in Maramureş County. He would settle in a small village for a week or two, conduct prayers and preach. For its part, the community provided him with lodgings and furnished a consulting room. He frequently had to deal with questions regarding the dietary laws (kashruth) and, in particular, the separation of meat and milk: for which housewife did not agonise over the dictum that she must pour away a bucket of precious milk if she suspects that a speck of meat accidentally fell inside?

While giants were traditionally deemed to be stupid, all body and no brains, dwarfs – whatever the mixed biblical and rabbinic opinions – were popularly believed to have been born with great wisdom and magical powers as godly compensation for what they had been deprived of in inches. Shimshon Eizik Ovitz benefited from this folk belief. He rapidly became famous for his spiritual powers and people flocked to see him wherever he went.

Surrounded by people who believed in miracles, the charismatic Ovitz added amulets, spells and charms to his repertoire. He would lay hands on the head of a sick child and recite a prayer. For an infertile woman, he would inscribe a blessing in ancient Hebrew letters on a piece of parchment to be worn at all times. Often he provided the services of a lay psychologist by listening to the laments of wives with matrimonial problems and advising them how to restore peace – and stray husbands – to the household.

Ovitz was paid handsomely for his opinions and advice, especially by certain businessmen who consulted him regularly before signing new deals. He himself had a good head for business, investing his earnings in property and land. Official Maramureş County documents attest to Shimshon Eizik Ovitz’s popularity, prosperity and social mobility: at first, he was registered as a ‘cantor’; in later years as a ‘wizard’; and he finally gained the status of ‘landlord’.

Great healer though Ovitz was, he was powerless when his own wife Brana fell ill and died of tuberculosis in the winter of 1901 at the age of thirty-three. Since he spent most of his time travelling to make a living, he could not take proper care of his two teenage daughters – nor could he simply leave them to their own devices. Furthermore, for the sake of distance from improper thoughts, the community expected this well-known religious authority to find a new wife.

Barely had the usual thirty days of mourning passed when the matchmakers began knocking at the door. Ovitz refused to consider widows and divorcees, as they were burdened with their own children. But he did find Batia Bertha Husz, a girl from a distant village only two years older than his daughter Rozika, much to his liking.

What might have persuaded a pair of loving parents to give their pretty, healthy, eighteen-year-old daughter to a crippled widower not only twice her age, but also with two dwarf daughters? Shimshon Eizik Ovitz’s reputation as a prosperous healer and spiritual superman must have worked for him. To head off the anticipated gossip about Ovitz’s preference for a young virgin, everyone was told that the bride was already an old maid of twenty-four. In any event, Shimshon hoped that with this fresh chapter in his life, his hereditary luck might also change. It didn’t. On 26 September 1903, Avram was born, a dwarf. In June 1905, a baby girl was born, named Frieda after Shimshon’s mother. She proved to be a dwarf as well.

When the third child was born in August 1907, the Ovitzes had reason to believe the spell had finally lifted, since Sarah was the first child to grow healthy and tall. But in July 1909 came Micki, a dwarf. Two years later, the pendulum once more swung in the opposite direction, Leah being average-sized, with child number eight, Elizabeth, arriving in April 1914 – again a dwarf. Three years later came average-sized Arie, and the youngest of them all was born on 10 January 1921.

Choking, suffocating, she emerged with the umbilical cord tied around her neck. The despairing midwife took her away from the exhausted mother and placed her quietly aside, waiting for her to die. At first, Batia Ovitz didn’t understand. She asked to see the baby and when the midwife ignored her, she became alarmed. ‘Let her rest in peace,’ advised the midwife, hinting consolingly at the baby’s critical condition. ‘This child must live! Bring her to me!’ ordered Batia, forcing herself upright. The midwife obeyed. Batia hugged her baby and noticed that its jaws were locked. She bent its head back and, inserting her index finger into the tiny mouth, she almost tore it open. The baby responded with a deep cough.

Later Piroska Ovitz – her Yiddish name ‘Perla’ reflected her pearl-like size and beauty – liked to blame her mother for her big mouth. In Perla’s infancy, it was hard to tell whether or not she would join her three normally growing siblings. Every symptom was analysed both ways, and the signs seemed to indicate that she would escape the six dwarfs’ fate. She didn’t. Shimshon Eizik’s genetic trait had once more asserted its dominance, as it had in seven out of his ten children: the largest recorded dwarf family in the world.

Ovitz built a new home for his large clan. He rented the old shed in the back yard to the new village doctor, so they now had a physician at hand. Although their house stood next to the synagogue, Ovitz and his seven dwarf children found it difficult to cross the muddy earth in the long, cold winters to attend daily prayers. When they did manage, unavoidably they created a great deal of fuss, for in order to see the cantor and the Holy Ark, they all had to be raised onto small stools placed on the bench.

To make things easier on them all, Ovitz converted one of his rooms into an everyday prayer room. As one of the community philanthropists, he eventually donated part of his land and money to help renovate the community synagogue, which he attended mainly on the high holidays. He continued his travels, leaving Batia at home to take care of the ten children. Since she treated her husband’s two daughters from his first wife as her own, Perla grew up without knowing that Rozika and Franziska had a different mother: ‘As they were miniatures, I didn’t realise they were almost mother’s age. They helped her a lot to raise us.’

In September 1923, Shimshon Eizik Ovitz attended a wedding in a faraway village. Immediately after the meal, his body temperature soared, and he began sweating and vomiting. His assistant and coachman, Simon Slomowitz, rushed him home. Ovitz was wracked with pain. The fish he had eaten was poisonous. He died after a week of agony, at four in the afternoon on Sunday 16 September. He was fifty-seven years old.

Only a few tombstones from the extinct Jewish community of Rozavlea have survived in the abandoned cemetery. Miraculously, one of them marks the grave of Shimshon Eizik Ovitz. The fading Hebrew inscription reads:

Here lies an honest, virtuous, learned man, a charitable benefactor of the poor, all of whose deeds were for the honour of God.

TWO

ROZAVLEA, 1923

For a widower with ten children, the matchmaker could still find a spouse. But there was no chance that at thirty-nine the newly widowed Batia Ovitz would find a man willing to take on the burden of providing for her and her children, five of them under fourteen, seven of them dwarfs.

The family struggled to rearrange itself. Having just turned twenty, Avram stepped into his father’s shoes – he had already accompanied Shimshon Eizik on his travels as his apprentice, observing him perform the roles of rabbi and badchan. With the same small frame as his father, he would occasionally mount the table and join him in rousing the crowd. The double-bill dwarf act had been a success.

As both the new provider and the head of the family, Avram Ovitz strove to maintain his father’s contacts in the villages scattered throughout the region, with the aid of the ever loyal Simon Slomowitz, his father’s coachman and travelling assistant. Gradually he gained confidence, composed his own witty lines and developed his own style of performance.

Perla, who was eighteen months old when her father died, had no memory of him. As a child, the only man she called ‘Papa’ was her brother Avram. No one at home corrected her; perhaps out of pity, her siblings wished to postpone the bitter truth of her being fatherless as long as possible. Avram took charge of her education, testing her in her studies. When she wanted sweets, she turned to Avram for money. By the time she reached the age of six she was about his height, but this did not strike her as odd.

One day, while Perla was helping a girlfriend who lived across the street with her homework, she began bragging about the generosity of her father. The girl’s mother overheard Perla’s boasts, and felt obliged to correct her.

‘You really can’t call him father – he’s your brother!’ she said to Perla.

‘He is too my father – he gives me all my things. Everybody’s got a father, and so do I!’ Perla contended. But the neighbour wouldn’t let it drop. ‘Actually, you don’t have any father! He’s dead!’

Perla rushed home. Sobbing, she told her sisters what the neighbour had said. ‘She’s lying!’ she cried. ‘Come and tell her she’s wrong!’ As Perla’s sisters hugged her and tried to console her, it started to dawn on her that the neighbour might have been speaking the truth. Then, for the first time, her sisters told her the story of her real father, Shimshon Eizik. For years to come, Perla had to bite her tongue to keep the word ‘Papa’ from slipping out when addressing her brother Avram.

The Ovitz clan buzzed with bee-like cheerfulness. Each member played a specific part in the household and mother Batia orchestrated them all. The average-height teenagers Sarah and Leah took care of day-to-day physical tasks like washing and cooking, or carrying the basketfuls of laundry to the Iza River to be scrubbed on a wooden plank. For years they also did the sewing, until Elizabeth and Perla were old enough and skilled enough to make clothes for all their sisters. The dwarfs refused to wear children’s clothes: ‘They looked ridiculous on us. People tend to view dwarfs as children anyway, and we wished to look respectable.’ The age span between the oldest and youngest sister was thirty-five years, but since they were almost the same height and size they could all wear identical clothes. In their all-blue or all-pink dresses, they were often mistakenly thought to be twins or triplets. The five female dwarfs also combed each other’s hair and painted shiny varnish on each other’s nails. They never wore high-heeled shoes, since these were unstable to stand on and could make no real difference to their height. ‘Shoes had to be custom-made for us anyway, because of our unusually broad soles.’

The interior of their wooden home, which was painted white, resembled a doll’s house. Decorated with a great deal of handmade lace and tapestry, it was furnished with low washbasins, beds with sawn-off legs, tiny chairs and many stools. The four average-height members had to adjust, although there was also furniture suitable for them and for the occasional guests. The dwarfs had to be careful using the toilet hut in the back yard, which was a simple hole dug in the ground. A smaller wooden tier made just for them narrowed the hole so they wouldn’t fall through.

The Ovitzes had everything they needed in their small paradise. The front garden was full of flowers and the back yard was an orchard: apples, plums, peaches, pears, grapes, hazelnuts. They raised chicken and geese and kept a few cows in the shed. While they had to rely on hired help to pick the fruit, milk the cows and pump water from the large stone well in front of the house, they were able to bake their own bread, smoke their own geese, churn their own butter and make jam.

The Ovitz house stood on Rozavlea’s main street. Relatives of Shimshon Eizik Ovitz – his three brothers and one sister – lived nearby with their families. The two younger brothers, Israel Meir and Lazar, were also artistically inclined and Uncle Lazar, together with five of his ten sons, formed a klezmer troupe that played at weddings. Influenced by local Gypsy bands, the now-famous klezmers – the Hebrew–Yiddish word actually means ‘musicians’ – had been playing folk tunes, dance tunes and Hasidic melodies, all over Europe, for centuries. They were popular not only in the Jewish communities, but also among the non-Jewish town dignitaries and the bourgeoisie, who preferred the Jewish klezmers to their Gypsy counterparts, since the Gypsy music was considered coarse.

‘The heart is like a violin: you harp on the strings and melancholy tunes pour out,’ goes a Yiddish proverb. The fiddler – in a well-known painting Chagall has depicted him gliding with his fiddle over the village rooftops – was the klezmer band’s leader. Next in importance was the clarinet player, whose music could at once make eyes water and feet tap, while the bassist provided rhythmic and harmonic underpinnings. As the band’s primary purpose was to crowd the floor with dancers, the beat of the percussions was firm and steady. Instead of piano, larger bands also had an accordion, as well as a cimbalom.

Like all klezmers, Lazar Ovitz and sons were natural musicians with no formal musical education and could not read notes. Spontaneous, skilled improvisers, they mastered their instruments through instinct and emotion, playing with ecstasy. There were around 5,000 klezmers in Eastern Europe at the time. Competition was so intense that sometimes a band would pay parents to perform at a wedding, and then hope to make some small profit from the tips they would get for playing favourite tunes. Despite the meagre earnings, klezmers stuck to their trade for it was also a passion, even when it had to be financed through manual labour – for instance, Lazar Ovitz and sons were horse traders. While both the badchan and the klezmer made their living from weddings, they enjoyed different levels of esteem, Jewish society valuing the word more than the tune. The badchan earned more respect for his learning and verbal facility than the low-class klezmer, whose joie de vivre was aligned with fickleness.

The musicians in most klezmer bands did not come together by chance but were carrying on a family trade, with talent and melodies they had inherited from parents and older relatives. This is how Rozika and Franziska came to play the violin: they picked up the music and mastery from their uncle and neighbour Lazar. In pious families, however, it was unheard of for young women to travel alone, so the two sister violinists accompanied their brother Avram on his trips to weddings. The three Ovitz dwarfs soon became a major attraction, Rozika and Franziska exciting audiences with their child-sized violins and winning applause when they sang in their high-pitched voices. Thus began a family pattern. Each child would learn to play an instrument and at sixteen would join the musical troupe of the Ovitzes.

Being surrounded by six brothers and sisters her own height made it easier for Perla to come to terms with her dwarfism.

Like every child, I expected to add a few centimetres every year and grow like a flower. But when I saw the others, I realised I’d never grow tall. It saved me from feeling inferior and helped me accept myself as I am. In my dreams, my legs and arms don’t lengthen, and I’ve never fantasised about a good fairy coming to double my height. Being a dwarf is no punishment. The difference in height does not diminish my pleasures. Our life is as worthwhile as anyone else’s.

On 1 December 1918 – two years before Perla’s birth – Romania annexed Transylvania from Hungary as part of the Great War’s peace agreements. The major change was felt at school, with the official language becoming Romanian and Hungarian culture publicly eradicated. But like most Transylvanian Jews, the Ovitzes prided themselves on their historical and cultural connections with Hungary, and maintained them at home. Perla picked up the language and old songs by listening to her sisters. She had a musical ear and a good singing voice: ‘From infancy, I imitated my sisters and sang from morning to night, causing everyone a headache. Our tenant doctor continually bribed me with chocolates to shut me up.’

She was a bright child and began reading even before she started to attend the local primary school, which was just a few houses down the road. Although she could manage the short distance well enough, she often found herself in the arms of teachers and classmates hoping not so much to spare her legs but – more so – to have fun leaping around with a living doll. No one bothered to ask her permission and she did not protest, afraid of losing their company. She especially liked to play hide-and-seek with the neighbouring boy Arie Tessler. Whenever he caught her, he would spontaneously swing her in victory around the room. ‘I have always believed she was my age and only recently learned to my surprise that she is in fact six years older than me. Her tiny build fooled me,’ recalls Arie.

In school plays she was often cast as a baby in a cradle – a role she did not seem to mind at all. She certainly didn’t miss the daily humiliation of blackboard arithmetic exercises, since she could not reach the board. She was also exempt from gymnastics and avoided the schoolyard during playtimes, for fear of being knocked down by the full-size children. Instead, she used the time to do her homework, thus becoming popular among her classmates as she willingly let them copy her notebooks. ‘They all needed me for their studies, so they never mocked me, and treated me with respect.’ In return for her help, they escorted her home, carrying her books and guarding her from the dogs, which all seemed to her huge and threatening. A dog, no matter how friendly, could tip her over just by brushing against her or trying to lick her face.

One day between classes, Perla was standing alone in the empty schoolroom staring at a large map of Romania. In her hand, she held the teacher’s pointer, which was longer than she was tall. She was unaware that a supervisor had stepped inside, until he thundered, ‘What are you doing here, little girl?’ For a moment she was dumbfounded, but she soon composed herself. ‘I’m studying. I know the map by heart and can point wherever you want, even with my back to the wall,’ she boasted. He challenged her to find Cluj, then watched in disbelief as she turned around and, magician-like, lifted the pointer over her shoulder and hit the town on its dot. Amazed, he asked for more towns and then mountains. Each time, the tip of her pointer landed on the exact spot. The act made her famous in school, and she repeated it again and again. Not once did she reveal even a flicker of stage fright.

There were happy times for the family when one after the other, three of the female dwarfs got married. The first was Rozika, the oldest, and already an old maid of forty when, on 2 May 1927, she married her 28-year-old cousin Marcus Ovitz. The twelve-year gap in their ages didn’t show since like most dwarfs, she looked much younger than her years. Next to wed was Franziska, who married Marcel Leibovitz, followed by Frieda, who exchanged vows with Ignaz (Izo) Edenburg, an electrician from the nearby town of Sighet. The village gossips, who couldn’t get over the fact that all three grooms were healthy men of average height, concluded that they must have been drawn to the family fortune.

Because the three newlywed wives refused to leave their kin, their husbands had no choice but to move in. Each couple had a room of its own and the new spouses were expected to earn their keep by helping the family dwarfs with daily chores. This arrangement would apply to all future weddings as well. Some spouses would adjust. Others would find it a strain and divorce. ‘My uncles and aunts, the seven dwarfs, were so attached to each other they were like a mythological creature, one body and seven heads,’ explains Perla’s nephew Shimshon Ovitz, who was named for his grandfather.

Summer departs early in Transylvania, and September is often a capricious month. The sunshine is deceptive and the chilly air behind its beams can be dangerous. One such September day in 1927, a neighbour of Batia Ovitz implored her to share a swim in the river, the last chance before winter. It was Friday and although Batia had nearly finished preparing the Sabbath meal, she did not feel inclined to join in the adventure. But her friend insisted until Batia gave in. The two women headed towards the Iza, whose banks were serene, the water glimmering with temptation. Batia Ovitz was almost glad that she had overcome her misgivings, as she braved the river’s grey-green water. She barely noticed the chill in the light September wind. Then, suddenly, she felt a stab in her chest and let out a scream. Leaning on her frightened friend, she struggled her way home. The doctor was called in; he diagnosed tuberculosis.

For almost three years, Batia Ovitz lay bedridden. Every day, when Perla returned from school, she would rush to her mother’s bed and, to make her happy, recited her lessons. ‘But I was not allowed to cuddle with her, like I was used to. Let mother rest, I was always told, and sent from the room.’ Once the door was shut, her mother would cough out blood.

On 8 February 1930, Saturday evening, the Ovitz house was filled with gloomy-faced people.

I asked my sisters why they were all dressed in black and what all the strangers were doing. I was told they came to take Mummy to the doctor. I was puzzled as to why they needed so many people to accompany her. My sisters didn’t answer. I thought they were crying because of her illness.

Nine-year-old Perla was not taken to her mother’s funeral. For weeks, the entire family evaded her questions. She refused to eat in her mother’s inexplicable absence and rapidly lost weight. Her sisters finally had to lock her like a goose between their knees and force food down her throat. Eavesdropping one day, Perla heard anxious whispers from the next room: ‘If she goes on with her hunger strike, very soon she’ll join mother.’ Perla could not contain her happiness. She pushed the door open and pleaded: ‘Please let me join Mummy.’ The whispers resumed and then her sister Sarah turned her way: ‘Promise not to cry.’ Perla nodded. ‘Mother has gone,’ said Sarah.

‘So let’s go where she is,’ urged Perla.

The sad truth began to sink in only when her sisters couldn’t stop sobbing.

THREE

ROZAVLEA, 1930

His name was Hershel Weisel, but he was known in the region as Hershel der Langer (Hershel the Tall One), for he was a giant. In his boat-like shoes he stood seven feet, two inches tall, and with wild-grown beard, protruding teeth and thundering voice, he might have been feared as a monster. Instead, he was a laughing stock. Unable to find a job because of his massive size, he was reduced to begging. To earn some money, he toured the villages with his average-height wife, and Long and Short, as they were called, leaped around like dancing bears, to the applause and ridicule of all.

Batia Ovitz had feared that a lone dwarf would be twice as helpless as such a giant: her children’s only strength, she believed, lay in numbers. On her deathbed, she imparted to them a rule to guide them through life, a rule that in fact would eventually save them: ‘Through thick and thin, never separate. Stick together, guard each other, and live for one another.’ She exhorted them to cultivate a common skill, so that they could earn their living together with no need to rely on the kindness of strangers – to find a profession in which they would be neither isolated nor ostracised, but rather welcomed, a profession in which they would flourish.

The stage seemed to be the perfect choice, for there would they not be applauded, courted, honoured? Three of the dwarfs had already been in the wedding show business, and they could continue to try their luck with a klezmer band. But that option would leave out the remaining four, so it was rejected. On the other hand, establishing their own wedding band also presented problems: some klezmer bands featured one woman or maybe two, but a group of five female and two male musicians would have been too much for the more conservative revellers to allow. And in any event, prospective clients might well be reluctant to book an all-deformed band for their children’s great day. Furthermore, the small, weak lungs of the Ovitzes did not permit them to play any wind instrument – an essential for weddings. All in all, they had to admit that playing energetic dance music for endless hours on their crooked feet would be an intolerable strain. Lastly, the socio-economic status of klezmers was already low and the Ovitzes suspected that as dwarfs they would be doubly discriminated against.

Because they deviate from the norm, dwarfs have always had a problem earning a living. Yet, historically, they have fared better than sufferers from other major deformities. The public has, of course, always been interested in the diversity of creation and in oddities of nature: an elephant man arouses aversion and pity; a giant evokes astonishment; a girl with three legs prompts apprehension. But dwarfs make people smile. Unlike ‘freaks’ – historically labelled mirabilia monstrorum, or ‘monstrous wonders’ – dwarfs are mirabilia hominum