Nivelli: A death camp magician (Part 2)
The second part of this blog about Nivelli, a German Jewish magician, continues the story of his journey through The Holocaust, and how he used magic to survive in the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp...
Magic for survival
When Nivelli arrived at the Auschwitz II-Birkenau ‘family camp’ he was tattooed with the number #A1676. In this inhumane and impersonal environment, the Nazi guards - and even the inmates themselves - referred to each other by their numbers; such was the degeneration of life there.
But, among the several thousands Jews and other untermensch [Nazi term: sub-humans, such as Romani people and homosexuals] in the family camp, Nivelli had an identify beyond a number.
“When the S.S. [abbreviation for Schutzstaffel, Nazi paramilitary organisation] found out that I was ‘Nivelli, the Magician’ whom many had seen in leading theatres throughout Germany, they sought me out and commanded that I entertain them.”
“With practically nothing in the way of magical apparatus or gimmicks just a dirty pack of playing cards I had managed to keep, and some string and coins (the Germans lent me these), I put a slip-shod act together that was good enough to keep me constantly on call. And I mean, constantly… for these devils would come to my bare wooden bunk at all hours of the night, prod me in the ribs, and demand that I get up and ‘do some tricks.’”
Reconstructed accommodation block at Auschwitz II-Birkenau
(Source: DavidConFran - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0)
Nivelli’s magic was witnessed by a teenager called Werner Reich, another inmate of BIIb’s Barrack 12A, where Nivelli was imprisoned for two or three months in summer 1944:
“I never saw Nivelli in performance except his frequent practicing with an old worn deck of cards. His number was A1676 and mine is A1828. We must have come in the same transport from Theresienstadt. Of course, he was an old man in comparison to the rest of us. He must have been about 37 or 38, and I was just 16. We slept next to each other [on a three-tier bunk bed], and I just recall him as being a very nice person… I am sure that at least a hundred times we stood together, waiting to be counted or waiting for the soup to be ladled out.”
“He was very polite and friendly, a truly gentle, kind soul…. One day, he pulled out a pack of cards and started to mix them. Now, ordinarily, a pack of cards is nothing unusual, but in the camp, it was like a miracle. You weren’t supposed to have anything personal on you: no watch, wallet and especially no playing cards. But there he was, playing with a deck of cards. This routine he repeated daily. I did not know what he was doing, but he was actually playing for his life…”
Nivelli constantly needed to develop new tricks to keep his performances for the guards fresh:
“I added thimbles to my repertoire, and some cut up sponge. With this sponge I fashioned the little pellets and with some cups, did the cups and balls.”
People like to be entertained and but not all like to be fooled, so Nivelli’s magic also placed him in danger. He needed to present his tricks in a way that did not rile the Germans. And he had to ignore the magicians’ rule of not divulging the secrets of his tricks, as the German demanded to know how they were done:
“My magic placed me in dangerous positions in all the concentration camps, as I had to put on events for the S.S. rogues of an evening and had to teach each one of the peasants, so that they could do it all themselves, in order no longer to have need of the Jew.”
Nivelli was forced repeatedly to perform card tricks and small magic for the Nazi guards. He was an amusement to them, which meant they had an interest in keeping him alive, at least for now.
“It made my life much easier, for the next day they would let me sleep longer and not give me rough work to do. I also had special food.”
A few months after Nivelli’s arrival in Section BIIb, the Germans carried out a second liquidation of its occupants. At the start of July 1944, Dr Joseph Mengele (a German S.S. doctor, infamous for carrying out experiments on Auschwitz’s inmates) visited BIIb to conduct a selection. Healthy individual between the ages of 16 and 45 were selected to live and removed to other parts of the camp. About 3,500 people were removed from BIIb; the remaining 6,500 murdered in the gas chambers.
Thirty-seven-year-old Nivelli survived the selection, despite his injured right leg restricting his physical ability. The fact that Nivelli was known to the guards as a magician probably saved his life.
Sadly, his wife Gerda and 8-year-old son Peter did not pass the selection (as most other mothers who chose to stay with their children didn’t). They were gassed and cremated between 10 and 12 July 1944.
Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg and Schwarzheide labour camps
A few days after the selection (and without knowing the fate of his wife and child) Nivelli was sent, along with the other selected men, to Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Oranienburg, 20 miles north of Berlin. Sachsenhausen was a labour camp, outfitted with several sub-camps, a gas chamber, and a medical experimentation area.
It was a brutal camp. Prisoners were treated inhumanely, fed inadequately, and killed openly.
Inmates at Sachsenhausen concentration and extermination camp
(Source: Public domain)
Evidence suggests that Nivelli didn’t stay at Sachsenhausen’s main camp, but went instead to Schwarzheide in southern Brandenburg, a sub-camp, 70 miles south of Berlin.
Nivelli was likely put to work in a petrol and diesel fuel plant there, while those prisoners who remained in Oranienburg worked in the Heinkel aircraft factory, or as slave labour for AEG and Siemens, and in a brick factory.
Once again, his magic - performed on demand for the guards - helped him keep alive.
Inmates working at the Sachsenhausen brickworks
(Source: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-A0706-0018-020 / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de)
At the end of 1944, leader of the S.S. Heinrich Himmler, concerned about the advancing Soviet Army, ordered the execution of all the prisoners at Sachsenhausen.
Some 3,300 inmates were executed or transferred to extermination camps. A further 33,000 prisoners were ordered on a forced march northwest, away from the Soviet’s advance. Physically exhausted, thousands did not survive this death march and were shot en route by the S.S.
Just 3,400 inmates were left in Sachsenhausen; their fate to be determined.
With incredible luck, and perhaps because the guards knew him as ‘Nivelli, the magician’, Nivelli avoided the executions and the forced march. He was one of the contingent of inmates left behind in the main camp. This was possibly because he was moved there from Schwarzheide after the executions and the departure of prisoners on the forced march.
On 22 April 1945, the 1st Belorussian Front and the Polish 2nd Infantry Division of the Soviet Army liberated the Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg concentration camp.
“Finally, in the concentration camp in Oranienburg, near Berlin, I was rescued.”
After four-and-a-half years of captivity, and surviving four concentration camps, Nivelli was a free man.
“But by that time, through lack of food, I was so weak I could only walk on sticks, improvised crunches. My fingernails and toenails had dropped off. I was the first man to come back from the camp alive, to Berlin. There I was given proper food and clothing.”
Aftermath - returning to magic
“Now, I stood lonely and alone in life, sick and mentally broken. I did not know left from right. Where should I now turn?”
After his liberation by the Red Army, Nivelli headed first to nearby Berlin, where the Nazi Third Reich had collapsed. Defeated Germany was now occupied by the Allies. Millions of Germans were homeless from Allied bombing campaigns, and millions more displaced persons and refugees sought food, shelter, and medical care. Many Jewish survivors tried to return to their pre-war homes and found that they were not welcome; particularly if their homes had been purloined or allocated to others who didn’t want to give them back.
“I believed all the Nazis were dead, but, like vermin, they gradually crept out of their hovels and, 14 days later, they were all there again in full force. My first woe led me to Levetzow Strasse 19. The upper two stories were bombed out, but in our apartment a half-Jewish Doctor held a surgery. As I had no abode, the Mayor of Moabit gave me accommodation in the burnt-out Simcha room of the Levetzow synagogue and the Magistrate gave me food. I was really miserable and recovered slowly.”
Next, he travelled to Czechoslovakia, to try and find his wife and son, hoping they’d survived Auschwitz and made it back to the family home in Prague:
“I received approval from the Russian Command to cross the Czech border in prison clothes, which was naturally closed. I had to get to Prague to see Gerda and the boy, as I still hoped to see them alive.”
Of course, he didn’t find his wife and son, only later learning that they were gassed to death just a few days after he last saw them.
After Nivelli was arrested and deported to Theresienstadt Ghetto in 1941, his wife had stored his magic equipment with a non-Jewish craftsman based in Prague who’d supplied Nivelli’s magic stores before the war. Nivelli went to see the craftsman to ask if his props had survived the war. Incredibly, “this honest man handed everything out to me after 4 years untouched.”
From Prague, Nivelli travelled back to Berlin, still in his stripy prison clothes, for he owned nothing else at that time. The authorities gave him a furnished room to help him get back on his feet and he started up again as a magician.
The German magic community in Berlin rallied around Nivelli and gave me some more tricks – all made of wood by their own hands.
Many other magicians had lost their equipment as a result of bombings and other impacts of the war, so the fact that Nivelli still possessed part of his pre-war act, helped him a great deal. Magic supplies were hard to come by during wartime and in the immediate post-war period due to rationing of the raw materials needed to manufacture them (like metal and paper).
“I started all over again. Six months later, I was performing on the stages in Berlin where I had achieved fame before the war... I got appointments in abundance and newspaper interviews with my picture and in quite a short time I became very well-known there and, in the course of a year, acquired a rather large fortune.”
One of his post-war performances was at the glamorous neo-baroque Schiffbauerdamm Theatre in Berlin. The programme described Nivelli as:
“One who has laughter in his heart because fate has been good to him, while also in his heart and mind he cries, because of all the memories imprisoned in his mind from behind the electric wire barricades.”
Schiffbauerdamm Theatre in Berlin
(Source: Architekturmuseum TU Berlin)
From a prisoner on the verge of death and, on his liberation, destitute. To a renown magician, performing on stages such as the Schiffbauerdamm within just a few months, was a remarkable journey by Nivelli. His resurrection was testament to his inner strength, good character, and his prowess as a magician.
Post-war life
Despite this success in his home country, it was time for a new start. Viewing Germany as still rife with anti-semitism, Nivelli emigrated to the United States of America in 1947. President Harry S. Truman had issued the Truman Directive in December 1945, allowing for a quota of ‘displaced persons’ to enter America each year. Many Jews displaced by the war used the scheme to start new lives in America.
“I got to America on the Displaced Persons quota, and praise God. These wonderful, wonderful people. I am now living in New York City with my sister Hettie. We are so happy.”
Already known as a fine magician when he arrived in the United States, Nivelli was greeted on the pier in New York City by a bevy of reporters, resulting in several articles about his former success in Germany and his time in captivity.
He reunited with his sister Hettie and settled in the borough of Queens in New York City, where there was an established and growing Jewish population.
With sister Hettie as his onstage assistant, Nivelli started earning a living as a magician in America, swiftly establishing himself as a fine performer and earning Broadway appearances.
Nivelli, in a post-war publicity image, performing the Zombie Floating Ball
(Source: Herbert Lewin)
Not long after arriving in America, Nivelli met Lotte Sommers, a concert singer and fellow German. She was the sole survivor of a large Jewish family, her first husband having been murdered by the Nazis. The pair married in January 1948 and Lotte replaced Hettie as Nivelli’s on-stage assistant.
Just a year after arriving, he wrote:
“We are so, so busy playing dates in theatres. And I have just come from Atlantic City, where I was honoured to have been chosen to play on the bill at the great convention of The Society of American Magicians.”
A television performance on ‘Masters of Magic’ in 1949 boosted their performing career further and by the end of the next year, The Nivellis had already appeared in 35 of America’s 48 states.
Their combined talents were a hit and they soon owned, “apart from our own car, a glorious house with everything in it that you could possibly think of. Lotte has her grand piano, washing machine, television and, even though we are seldom at home, as we constantly have appointments, heaven on earth for us means rest for a few days in our house. In spite of all the suffering, we are both, together, happy once again and are building again and are enjoying glorious America to the full.”
(Source: Google Maps)
In 1952, Herbert and Lotte Nivelli / Lewin became American citizens.
Together, The Nivellis criss-crossed America playing public shows in theatres, hotels, night-clubs and even cruise ships, for three decades.
The Nivellis (Herbert and Lotte Lewin)
(Source: Herbert Lewin)
Nivelli joined the Society of American Magicians, and the couple often appeared at magicians’ conventions. Magician, author and retired priest William V. Rauscher was in the audience for a convention in Philadelphia in January 1977. He recorded this account of their act:
“Nivelli and his wife Lotte’s act was charming, well timed, sophisticated, with a touch of comedy. Lotte assisted her husband as he performed a series of manipulations with cards, the Canary in Orange, Lemon and Egg. He also did Shooting a Ribbon Through a Woman, the Floating Ball, and the Substitution Trunk, known as the Metamorphosis illusion. And I couldn’t help but recognise something about these performers was different – different and appealing.”
“When they did the trunk trick, they change places. Tension rose in the audience when Lotte had difficulty moving the heavy trunk into place. Some in the audience thought this was funny and began to smirk, not realising it was part of their act. Some thought this frail-looking woman was not up to this activity and worried that something was about to go wrong.”
“Then Nivelli climbed into the trunk, and into a bag. Lotte tied the top of the bag closed, lowered the top of the trunk, and locked the lid. With difficulty she tried to climb on the trunk, but it was too high. So, she moved an old chair closer, climbed onto the chair, and finally was able to reach the trunk. And now the audience seriously thought she might fall.”
“Standing on top of the trunk, she pulled a square curtain up in front of her – and in an instant the quick change of one person for another was done, leaving the audience stunned.”
“Neither Nivelli nor his wife were young, and the audience stood in sincere appreciation for their talent. Their applause was deafening, and then cheers resounded in recognition of what they had just witnessed. Suddenly this demanding audience recognised the outstanding talent they had seen, and they decided they loved these two performers!”
On 1 May 1977, several months after their Philadelphia show, the couple gave a performance before an audience of 1,500 at a Shriners [American Masonic society] Convention in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
Two days later, 70-year-old Herbert Lewin – known professionally as Nivelli – passed away. He was laid to rest in Paramus, New Jersey.
Nivelli experienced genuine horror during World War Two, a first-hand witness to the tragedy of millions of human beings put to death.
Magic saved his life and provided a guiding light as he journeyed from darkness to freedom. Post-war, the brotherhood of magic provided props and other support to rebuild his career. And, in America, the eternal qualities of magic opened new doors, brought new friends, and helped him assuage the suffering and hate he experienced in The Holocaust.
*****
Read the Part 1 of this blog about Nivelli here.
In later life, Werner Reich became an amateur magician, inspired by his contact with Nivelli in Auschwitz. Read about his wartime story here.
A play referencing Nivelli’s name, ‘Nivelli’s War’ by Charles Way exists. It was first presented in 2017. The play is about a magician who helps a child at the end of World War Two. While inspired by Nivelli and Reich’s story, the play is entirely fictional and not a historical account of their Holocaust experience.
The Nivelli/Reich story is also told in the children’s book, ‘The Magician of Auschwitz,’ which includes a section summarising the real life wartime story of Nivelli and Reich.
Nivelli wasn’t the only magician held in Auschwitz. Others include Miss Blanche and, probably, Dr Laszlo Rothbart. The Nazis murdered more Jewish magicians in other German concentration and extermination camps, including Dutchmen Louis Lam and Ben Ali Libi.
Primary sources for this article include an account by Nivelli of his wartime experiences, published in ‘The New Conjurors’ Magazine’ (July 1948) and, a 5-page letter by him to relatives in 1951 describing his wartime experience and early post-war life. Quotes in the article are mostly taken from these sources. Also, testimony by Werner Reich, which is widely available, including within his autobiography contained within ‘The Death Camp Magicians’ (2015) by William V. Rauscher in collaboration with Werner Reich. Nivelli’s Holocaust journey is reconstructed using these sources, supplemented by secondary sources about the various concentration and extermination camps and known movements of Jews to and from these camps. The account of Nivelli’s 1977 performance in Philadelphia is by Rauscher and quoted from his book. AskAlexander provides many references from magic periodicals about Nivelli’s post-war performances.
Some other articles about Nivelli refer to his original name as Herbert Levin, not Herbert Lewin. I have used the latter, as this is the form Nivelli used himself in the 1951 primary source reference above.
Research supported by The Good Magic Award from The Good Thinking Society.
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