Who Am I? June 2022
I was born in Belchatow, Poland almost a year before the Gene Tunney vs. Jack Dempsey world’s heavyweight boxing title fight. My dad was a poor peddler who died when I was 3 years old. My family was very poor and my mom took in sewing to help support the family. I was the youngest of 8 siblings and even at age 5, I was expected to help support my family so I delivered meat from a kosher butcher to his customers.
I was a young teen when the Germans invaded our village which was near the German border. Jews were forced to do humiliating tasks and forced labor. The Germans beat Jews and encouraged the native population to do the same. My brother and I did some cross-border smuggling to help support the family. It wasn’t long before Torahs and holy books were burned and the Jewish community was confined to a hastily created ghetto in our village. Public hangings began as did deportations to Chelmno and other concentration and death camps in Poland.
I was deported to Jaworzno, a sub-camp of Auschwitz. There I was assigned to hard labor in a coal mine. I was afforded few tools and no protective gear. A German officer took notice of my sturdy build and offered me a conditional path to survival. I had had some boxing lessons in my youth and the officer proposed I become a boxer who would provide entertainment to Schutzstaffel officers on Sunday and Wednesday evenings. Those officers would bet on the outcome of the matches. Participants were like Roman gladiators. We fought with bare knuckles until our opponents could no longer rise. Losers were often shot or dispatched to the gas chambers. I was expected to face 4 or 5 opponents per evening. To protect his investment, my mentor supplied me with sausages and extra food. I estimate that I survived about 75 or so of those brutal bouts.
As the Red Army approached I was sent on a forced death march to Flossenburg. I was also sent to Gros-Rozen and 4 other camps before the war ended. I escaped from an airfield near Amberg in Germany and, while on the run, was forced to kill several Germans who I suspected would have denounced me and turned me over to the authorities. I was wearing a stolen German uniform when I surrendered to American soldiers. I showed them the camp tattoo on my arm which proved to them that I was a victim of the Nazis.
I was sent to a D.P. (“Displaced Persons”) camp where I did some boxing to support myself. It was then that I discovered that my mom and 5 of my siblings were murdered by the Nazis. I lost track of the girl of my dreams; however, with help from my relatives in Paterson, N.J., I sailed from Bremerhaven, Germany to NYC and lived with those relatives in Paterson. After a while, I moved to Brighton Beach and then to Brownsville. To support myself I became a light heavyweight boxing professional. I had a respectable U.S. record of 21 wins, 13 losses, and 5 draws with 8 K.O.’s. My last match was in Rhode Island with a promising boxer who, a few years later, would win the World Heavyweight Title and would retire undefeated. I hoped the publicity of my final match might alert surviving relatives and my lost love to the fact that I was still alive and living in the U.S.
After my boxing career ended I worked as a N.Y.C. cab driver, sold fruit and vegetables from a pushcart and opened a couple of stores selling produce. The memories and nightmares of the Holocaust never left me and unfortunately and regrettably, I was somewhat abusive to family members. I was also haunted by the fact that my boxing success in the camps led to the deaths of many of my opponents. That’s me in the photo.
(1a)Who Am I? (1b)What were the names of my parents? (1c)What were the names of my Paterson relatives, the husband and wife who took me in? (2a)I sailed to the U.S. from Bremerhaven aboard a U.S. Army troopship that was transporting refugees. What was the name of that ship? (2b)What was the name of my lost young love? (2c)Who did I fight in my last professional match? (3a)How did I meet my wife and what was her name? (3b)When did the Jewish ceremony of our marriage occur? (4a)An H.B.O. movie was made of my life story. What was the title of that film and who directed it? (4b)My story was also told in a graphic novel. Who wrote that novel and what was its title?
