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Before Pep Guardiola and before José Mourinho, there was Béla Guttmann: the first superstar football coach.
Remarkably, Guttmann was also a Holocaust survivor. Having narrowly dodged death by hiding for months in an attic near Budapest as thousands of fellow Jews in the neighbourhood were dragged off to be murdered, Guttmann later escaped from a slave labour camp. His father, sister and wider family were murdered by the Nazis.
But by 1961, as coach of Benfica, he had lifted one of football’s greatest prizes: the European Cup – a feat he repeated the following year. Rising from the death pits of Europe to become its champion in just over sixteen years, Guttmann performed the single greatest comeback in football history.
‘Through thick and thin, never separate. Stick together, guard each other, and live for one another.’
As Hitler’s war intensified, the Ovitz family would have good reason to stand by their mother’s mantra. Descending from the cattle train into the death camp of Auschwitz, all twelve emerged in 1945 as survivors – the largest family to survive intact.
What saved them? Ironically, the fact that they were sought out by the ‘Angel of Death’ himself – Dr Joseph Mengele. For seven of the Ovitzes were dwarfs – and not just any dwarfs, but a beloved and highly successful vaudeville act known as the Lilliput Troupe. Together, they were the only all-dwarf ensemble with a full show of their own in the history of entertainment.
The Ovitzes intrigued Mengele, and amongst the thousands on whom he performed his loathsome experiments, they became his prize ‘patients’: ‘You’re something special, not like the rest of them.’ It was this disturbing affection that saved their lives. After being plunged into the darkest moments in modern history, this remarkable troupe emerged with spirits undimmed, and went on to light up Europe and Israel, which offered them a new home, with their unique performances. Giants reveals their moving and inspirational story.
COPYRIGHT
First published in Great Britain in 2018 by
Biteback Publishing Ltd
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Copyright © Karen Bartlett 2018
Karen Bartlett has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
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ISBN 978–1–78590–357–1
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.