The Great Tihany: A circus impresario’s narrow escape
When World War Two began, Czeisler was working as the star magician and artistic director of Romania’s Circus Bucharest.
The war posed a particular problem for Czeisler because he was Jewish, a race which was being increasingly persecuted and murdered by Nazi Germany and its collaborators. But somehow, he kept his job and carried on performing undetected.
“My wife and my son were Christian, but my father and mother were Jewish. For many months, I performed for the military and the SS [Schutzstaffel, German: Nazi paramilitary organisation], so I was lucky to be alive.”
But, Czeisler’s luck was about to be tested to the extreme. In early 1942, he was in the city of Novi Sad (Hungarian: Újvidék) to set up future shows, when the Hungarian military were carrying out an ethnic cleansing operation. The Hungarians were seeking to improve their standing vis-à-vis Germany and also wanted to show their muscle in the city and wider area, which they’d captured from Yugoslavia the year before.
On 20 January 1942, the Royal Hungarian Army surrounded Novi Sad, cut the telephone lines and put the population under curfew. Over the next several days, they went about arresting ‘suspicious’ individuals, mostly Jews and Serbians. Some 6,000 and 7,000 people were arrested and interrogated. Most were released, but at least 40 – one of which was 25-year-old Franz Czeisler - were marched down to the banks of the River Danube.
Arriving at the water’s edge, many thought they were to be loaded onto boats or barges to be taken away. As they waited, in the freezing cold - the winter of 1941/42 was one of Europe’s coldest winters of the twentieth century – they observed enormous ice blocks bobbing in the river.
But no boats were coming. Instead, the Hungarian soldiers set up machine guns and started slaughtering the men, women, and children in front of them.
Fight-or-flight, Czeisler chose flight. With no other option, he jumped into the freezing river and started swimming. Weighed down by his shoes and heavy coat, he struggled past floating chunks of ice, narrowly avoiding the machine gun fire and escaping the massacre.
While the Hungarians pushed the bodies of the dead into the river, Czeisler swam for his life. Despite the sub-zero temperatures of the glacial water, he swam over 500m to the far shore of the Danube. Eventually, he crawled up the side of the river’s banks. He was alive, but only just.
After a few days being cared for by a Yugoslav family, Czeisler got back home to his family, who had not made the trip with him to Novi Sad and had presumed he was dead after hearing the news of what happened in the town.
While Czeisler survived, about 4,000 people were killed in the Hungarian army’s 25-day ethnic cleansing operation. He was one of the lucky ones and counted his survival of the massacre as the pivotal moment in his life.
Undeterred, Czeisler returned to performing for the remainder of the war, keeping a low profile.
He was fortunate and grateful to survive the Holocaust, as were his Jewish parents. But his brother Bela Czeisler died in the Buchenwald Concentration Camp.
Post-war success and legacy
Post-war, Czeisler toured Germany, France and Austria, entertaining U.S. troops as a magician under contract to the American Special Services, and later with his own magic revue.
In the late 1940s, he worked for Romania’s Circus Kratelj, before immigrating to the newly formed State of Israel in 1950. But performing opportunities were rather scarce in a new country that was building itself, so he went to Cyprus and Turkey before touring with the Italian Circo Coliseo. A chance encounter with the Brazilian Ambassador to Austria led to Czeisler travelling to Brazil. He joined the Circus Garcia there and performed as a magician until he’d saved enough money to buy a small circus of his own.
With his new venture, The Great Tihany toured Central and South America, improving and growing his Circo Magico [Spanish:Magic Circus] show year by year. By the late 1960s, Tihany’s Gran Circo Magico (or Circus Tihany as it became known) was a spectacular production which played with enormous success. In the 1970s and 80s, Czeisler produced his own television specials, gaining him further recognition and making the live shows even more popular.
Czeisler briefly retired in 1984, aged 68, only to return to the circus two years later. New illusions, acts and lavish sets and effects enhanced the show, which he toured into the early twenty-first century. He finally sold the circus and retired to Las Vegas in 2008.
For over fifty years, master showman Czeisler was the charming impresario who presided over the grandest circus and magic spectacle in Latin America, entertaining well over 35 million people.
“My dream,” said Tihany in 1989, “has been to bring laughter and wonder into people’s lives. In my magical tent, I can reach into audiences’ hearts and bridge generations and cultural gaps by stimulating their imaginations and letting them rediscover that child inside themselves.”
Sources include ‘El Gran Tihany: Circus Magic Legend’ an article by Alan Howard in Magic Magazine (April 2016), www.circopedia.org, and ‘Tihany, la Magia de la Vida’ (Tihany, Magic Life) a book by Carlos Ignacio González.
For more information on Blacaman, read this excellent blog by the Hypnotic Charlequin.
Related article: ‘Kindertransport magic.’ Jewish magician and pickpocket Giovanni entertains Jewish children escaping Germany for a new life in England. Blog link
Related article: ‘Dutch magician deported to extermination camp,’ tells the wartime story of Jewish-Dutch card magician Louis Lam. Blog link.
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