Standing Tall at Auschwitz

This documentary presents the Ovitz family, a Jewish Rumanian dwarf family. They were the only family sent to Auschwitz to survive intact. In the 30s and 40s the family toured in Transylvania and its surroundings, entertaining audiences with their musical performances. During the Holocaust they were sent to Auschwitz and caught the attention of Dr Mengele, the SS doctor at the camp, who in an ironic way, became their protector. The film describes the family’s story – Rozika, Franzika, Avram, Frieda, Sarah, Micki, Leah, Elizabeth and Perla – who came from Rozavlea, Transylvania (today Rumania), through their incarceration at Auschwitz and until their liberation and immigration to Israel. Includes interviews with Perla, the youngest family member who testified in 2001 a short time before her death, from natural causes, at the age of 80. This unusual story of the Ovitz Family’s survival is told through the use of eye witness accounts, dramatic reconstructions, interviews with the authors of the book, ‘In our hearts we were giants: the remarkable story of the Lilliput Troupe – a dwarf family’s survival of the Holocaust’, (2003) Eilat Negev and Yehuda Koren, photographs and archival footage.