Ovitz family

The Ovitz family was a family of Hungarian Jewish actors/traveling musicians originating from present Romania, who survived imprisonment at the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II. Most of them were dwarfs. They were the largest family of dwarfs ever recorded and were the largest family to enter Auschwitz and survive intact; the family of twelve ranged from a 15-month-old baby to a 58-year-old woman.

Origin

The Ovitz family originated from Maramureș County, Romania. They were descended from Shimson Eizik Ovitz (1868–1923), a badchen entertainer, itinerant rabbi and himself a dwarf. He fathered ten children in total, seven of them dwarfs (born with pseudoachondroplasia), from two marriages.

The children from his first marriage to Brana Fruchter (she was of average height), Rozika (1886–1984) and Franzika (1889–1980), were both dwarfs. Shimson's second wife, Batia Bertha Husz, also of average height, produced the following children: Avram (1903–1972; dwarf), Freida (1905–1975; dwarf), Sarah (1907–1993; average height), Micki (1909–1972; dwarf), Leah (1911–1987; average height), Elizabeth (1914–1992; dwarf), Arie (1917–1944; average height), and Piroska (a.k.a. "Perla"; 1921–2001; dwarf).

Lilliput Troupe

The children founded their own ensemble, the Lilliput Troupe. They sang and played music 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.