The photograph survives in the Auschwitz archives, published after the war among the thousands of images documenting Nazi crimes. It shows a group of neatly dressed little people seated around a festive table, surrounded by SS officers. The scene looks almost cordial, almost human. The question the picture never answers is how these well-dressed dwarfs ended up at the same table as their executioners—and how, against every expectation, most of them walked out of the death camp alive.

The story of the people in that photograph begins in the late nineteenth century, in a small Carpathian village called Rozavlea in Transylvania. There lived Rabbi Shimshon Ovitz, a man of remarkably short stature who nevertheless stood out in the community for reasons that had nothing to do with his height. Despite his size, he made a good living as a toastmaster at weddings. The villagers knew him as a cheerful, joyful man who could play practically every musical instrument and whose songs won the hearts of more than a few local girls.

The rabbi married twice, both times to women of normal height. From those two marriages came ten children, seven of whom were born dwarfs. As the children grew, their enterprising father recognized an opportunity: such an unusual family could earn good money. Shimshon decided to create a family troupe of traveling performers.

He began teaching the children songs, jokes, and the playing of various instruments, all the tricks of the street performer’s trade. The children learned quickly. Their father’s genes were showing themselves, not only in their stature but in their talent. But the old man did not have time to enjoy his family’s success.

In 1923 he passed away. His second wife, Basia, took over the training of the future artists. She ordered miniature violins, guitars, and cellos sized for the children’s small hands and strictly made sure they practiced. Soon Basia died as well, but before her death she made her children vow that they would always take care of one another.

After burying their mother, the Ovitz family decided to go to Europe to make a living. They called their band the Lilliput Troupe. In the 1930s, most European states supported Nazi policies, and attitudes toward Jews were far from favorable. Yet the talented family managed to win over audiences wherever they performed.

Their popular songs were heard in many languages, from Romanian to German. Among their admirers were high-ranking officials who helped the little artists change their documents. The Ovitz family became, on paper, an ordinary Hungarian family. Duties within the troupe were clearly divided.

The taller members—Arya, Sarah, and Leah—organized concerts, ordered costumes, worked with set designers, and arranged decorations. The smaller members—Francesca, Rozica, Freyda, Mickey, Elizabeth, Abraham, and Perla—performed on stage. The number of band members grew over time as some of the Ovitz children married, and the new spouses joined the friendly team. The family even bought a car for their tours.

Throughout this period, the Lilliput Troupe thrived. In 1940, part of Transylvania passed to Hungary. The Hungarian government already supported Hitler’s policies toward the Jews, but this had no effect on the Ovitz family. They continued to tour as before, protected by their false documents.

Then came 1944. It would be a tragic year for the Lilliput Troupe. The Nazis occupied Hungary, and the Gestapo had no trouble discovering the family’s true origins. In March, the troupe, along with the rest of the local Jews, was prepared for deportation to a concentration camp.

One of the SS officers at the railway station took a particular liking to the group, and so the Ovitz family entertained the Nazis in Hungary for another month. In early May, however, they were loaded onto a wagon and sent straight to the Auschwitz death camp. All the way to the camp, the little artists—well aware of where they were being taken—tried to keep up their courage and to keep the others from despair. They sang songs, played their instruments, and even handed out invitations to a concert they promised to give inside the camp.

For many of their fellow prisoners, it was their last experience of joy. People smiled and even laughed at the sight of the funny little people. Auschwitz received the new batch of arrivals with its usual fine-tuned conveyor belt: unloading, lineup, inspection. The healthy were directed to the right, the sick and injured to the left, the healthy to the barracks, and the rest to the gas chamber.

During the inspection, one of the SS officers noticed the amusing group of midgets. He took them aside and telephoned Dr. Josef Mengele, reporting that the new arrivals included material that would interest him. Mengele indeed ordered the midgets to be housed in a separate barrack.

The Ovitz family cheered up. What awaited those incapable of hard labor, as they well knew, was the gas chamber. Instead, they received a separate barrack and an exemption from work for a week. For that week, the family lived in obscurity.

They were not taken anywhere, not asked any questions, and they were well fed. But what did it all mean? Why were they separated from the others? What lay ahead of them?

A week later, the Ovitz family was moved to a separate block. As they later learned, this was where Mengele kept the prisoners he wanted to study in detail, those whom he considered of interest for his horrific research. The first experiments on the midgets seemed harmless enough. The doctors took blood samples, asked about their ancestry, and recorded which diseases they had suffered.

The Shlomowitz family of dwarfs participated in the experiments alongside the Ovitzes. The little artists introduced them to Mengele as their distant relatives, and the two families began to stick together. Gradually, the experiments became more serious. There was not a single day that passed without one family member being carried out of the laboratory on a stretcher, unconscious.

Mengele took brain samples from the midgets. He irradiated them with radiation. He injected scalding solutions into their uteruses. He poured boiling water over them.

He infected them with viruses and watched to see how the little people would endure it all—and whether they would survive. But the little people did survive. They endured the pains of hell. When they were stripped naked and displayed as exhibits, when their genitals were examined, the Ovitz family always stood with their heads held high.

Even when they were called cartoon dwarfs, they smiled. They knew perfectly well that only patience could prolong their lives for a few more days. And so they were patient. In January 1945, the Nazis, realizing their ultimate defeat, began freeing themselves from the evidence.

Every day, large numbers of people were driven into the gas chambers. The crematorium chimney, which had always smoked with black smoke, now covered the entire camp with it. The Ovitz family waited their turn. They sat in their barracks and sang sad songs together—perhaps for the last time.

Then, suddenly, Russian speech was heard outside the windows. The little people broke down in tears. Could it be true, the rumors that the Russians were beating the Nazis? The entire Ovitz family survived—except for one of the brothers.

He had tried to escape from the camp, unable to continue witnessing the tortures and experiments, and was shot dead by a guard. After the liberation, the Ovitz family went to Antwerp. A few years later, they all moved together to Israel, where for a long time they toured the country with concerts. But in 1955, the family opened their own business and never performed again.

As for Josef Mengele, despite his enormous crimes, he escaped punishment. He watched the Ovitz family for the rest of his life from Brazil, making notes about them in his diary. It is hard to believe, but this man lived happily into old age without ever answering for his atrocities. He might have lived even longer had he not suffered a heart attack.

The years in the Nazi concentration camp had taken their toll on the Ovitz family. From 1970 on, one by one, they began to pass away. The last to die was Perla, in 2001. In one of her interviews, she said that if they had been ordinary people instead of Lilliputians, they would hardly have survived the death factory.

What other people considered ugly had helped them to survive. They remained giants at heart. After their deaths, a book was published called “We Were Giants at Heart,” about the fate of the Ovitz family. It was written by their compatriots, Yael Negev and Yehuda Koren.

The book was translated into dozens of languages and became an international bestseller. That is how the whole world learned the extraordinary story of the Lilliput family who miraculously survived within the walls of Auschwitz—the family of seven dwarfs who once sat at a festive table, smiling at their executioners.