Magic at War

This two-part blog is published on the first anniversary of Werner Reich’s death (8 Jul 22). An amateur magician, he discovered magic during a chance encounter with a professional magician in the Auschwitz concentration camp. In this remarkable story, we learn how Reich survived the Holocaust and developed a lifelong interest in magic... Werner Reich (c1941) (Source: Werner Reich) Early years and arrest   Werner Reich was a German Jew. Born on 1 October 1927, he grew up in a suburb of Berlin. In 1933, when Werner was six-years-old, Adolf Hitler came to power. Regulations restricting Jewish freedoms followed, including the infamous Nuremberg Laws. Persecution led to Werner’s father losing his job, so the family emigrated to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in southeast Europe. The family settled in Zagreb and Werner spent his early school years there, free from anti-Semitism.  Werner Reich and his sister in Yugoslavia (c1934) (Source: Werner Reich) As World War Two took hold from...

A fledgling circus magician narrowly escapes the infamous Novi Sad raid in January 1942, where the Hungarian military massacred 4,000 Jewish, Serbian and other civilians to covet favour with Nazi Germany. Miraculously, he survived and went on to create the most spectacular magic-based circus show in Latin America. A circus magician   For over five decades, the name Circo Tihany was as famous in Latin America as the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circuses were in North America. It was the most successful travelling show on the continent.   The show was conceived and developed by Franz Czeisler (aka The Great Tihany), a magician and illusionist who built it from its early origins as an extended magic act into a spectacular variety circus.     Franz ( Hungarian : Ferenc) Czeisler was born on 29 June 1916, in   Kétegyháza , Hungary (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire).     He received a few lessons from German magician Alfredo Uferini as a ch...

Refugees from the Nazi regime began arriving in Britain long before war was declared on 3 September 1939. Many of these were Jews, escaping rising anti-Semitism and Hitler's persecution of their race. In November 1938, following a rise in violent attacks against Germany's Jewish population, the British Government changed its immigration laws. Realising it needed to respond to a humanitarian crisis, the government decided to allow the temporary admission of unaccompanied Jewish children.  Many of the children's parents had been killed by the Nazi regime, or sent to concentration camps. Some parents were still alive, but had sent their children away in the hope that the youngsters would have a better chance of survival away from Germany. Known as Kindertransport , this unprecedented scheme led to 10,000 mainly Jewish children entering the U.K. from Nazi Germany, Nazi-occupied Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland and the Free City of Danzig. Other children that came were ‘non-Aryan...