[Sport] The Jewish boxer fought 208 fights in Auschwitz and did not lose a single one.

[Drosel]

The Jewish boxer fought 208 fights in Auschwitz and did not lose a single one. He even beat German officers, and fights saved his life in the death camp

The eerie path of Salamo Aruch.

The little-known story of the Jewish boxer Salamo Arukh is a textbook on how inflexible the human spirit can be, even if you find yourself in a real hell on Earth - the death camp Auschwitz, where more than one and a half million people were killed.

Aruch's entire family died there, but he managed to survive in an incredible way. All thanks to boxing - Salamo performed for the amusement of Nazi officers and warders. Only instead of a champion belt and universal recognition, life was at stake for Arukh.

Arukh did not lose a single amateur fight and was supposed to take Olympic gold. All crossed out by the Nazi invasion

 

 

Salamo Aruch was born on the outskirts of Thessaloniki into a Jewish family with three other sisters and a brother. From an early age, Arukh helped his father, who worked as a loader in the port.

Hard work developed muscles in Aruch, and he spent all his free time in the boxing gym. At first, my father acted as a coach, and my brother was a sparring partner.

Salamo had his first official fight at the age of 14, and at 16 he was already a local star, representing the sports club "Aris". He won all 24 fights, simultaneously becoming the champion of Greece, and in 1939 he won the Balkan Middleweight Championship, after which he entered the ranks of the Greek army, increasing his record to 27-0. Arukh was so good on his feet that he was nicknamed Balerun for his extraordinary manner of moving around the ring. The undefeated boxer was Greece's main hope for gold in the Helsinki Olympic Games, but the outbreak of World War II canceled everything.

In the period from April 6 to April 30, 1941, as a result of the blitzkrieg, all of Greece was captured, and Arukh and his family ended up in the ghetto. For a year and a half, Salamo worked together with his relatives at construction work, and then - from March to August 1943 - about 70 thousand Jews were sent from Thessaloniki to the death camps. The Arukh family was among the first to be more unlucky than the rest - they were sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where the chances of survival are practically nil.

“We were literally transported like cattle: it was impossible to sit down in freight cars, where not only sleep, there were so many of us in one carriage. We traveled from Greece to Poland for about six days. Many did not make it, dying of hunger and exhaustion. They brought us closer to the night. My parents, my three sisters, my brother and other prisoners were stripped naked, then shaved off my heads and doused with ice water. Until noon the next day, we stood in the cold without the right to sit down, ”Arukh recalled.

The last time Salamo saw his relatives was when they were unloading from the camp. After a cursory inspection, the entire Arukh family was divided. Instead of a name, the boxer received the number 136954. His mother and sisters were destroyed by the Cyclone B gas within a few days. The father died from backbreaking work, and his brother was shot for refusing to remove the gold crowns from the corpses and the subsequent loading into the crematorium.

“In the camp, I met an acquaintance who had arrived before us and asked him where the others from our city were. He said: "They were gassed and the corpses burned." I decided then that he was just crazy. " I couldn't even imagine what kind of hell on earth was happening in Auschwitz, ”Salamo said.

 

Aruch faced the same fate as the whole family, but he was lucky: even then he was the star of the ring, and when one of the guards asked if there was a boxer among the Greek Jews, Salamo was literally pushed out of action:

“They drove us into a barrack, a car drove up, and the commandant got out of it. They were looking for boxers for their fun. He asked if any of us know how to box? My success in the amateur ring was not a secret to anyone from the camp, everyone pointed to me. He asked if I was ready to fight right now? I didn’t sleep all night and didn’t eat for several days, I could hardly stand, but I remember that I answered in the affirmative ”.

On the same evening, Arukh held the first camp duel, in which he defeated another Jew, a head taller than him.

“Then the rules of such fights were explained to me. There were no rounds, instead of a ring there was something like a circle. We fought until one of us was unconscious. The cost of each fight is your own life. I was shaking before every fight. I just knew that the loser would die. In those moments, I did not feel a sense of compassion, because only thanks to this I could save my life.

At such tournaments, SS officers, warders, and the commandant gathered. At first they were entertained with various circus acts, gypsies sang. And the battles were the highlight of the program. Great stakes were placed on us. My victories, as I understand it, made very few people happy, ”Salamo said.

Aruch fought 208 battles in Auschwitz and beat even drunken German officers. He was miraculously not shot
After making sure that Salamo was really a gifted boxer, he was transferred to a less hard job - as a janitor in the office, and the Nazis also improved food for Arukh, as much as possible in his conditions. Often for the victory he received a loaf of bread, which he shared in the barracks among other prisoners.

The battles took place twice a week - on Wednesday and Sunday - and Aruch always won. In total, he fought 208 fights. In 206 he won, in two more a draw was recorded, and only because while in the camp the boxer fell ill with dysentery. Once Salamo, who weighed 61 kg, knocked out an opponent who weighed 113 kg in 18 seconds. According to the few eyewitnesses of those events, the Nazis gave him a standing ovation. It happened that the SS officers, being drunk, put on gloves themselves and went out to fight Salamo Arukh.

The boxer beat them without difficulty. It is even more surprising how Salamo survived in such a situation, because he could have simply been shot. According to the most common version, the Nazis were simply afraid of the wrath of the camp commandant, who made good money on bets on Arukh.

“It was incredible to endure all this hell, of course, I thought about running away. Familiar Poles from the Resistance made a tunnel and offered to run with them. Soon they were all hanged so that everyone could see it. I no longer thought about running away. Boxing, I had at least some chance, ”said Arukh.

He lived to see the liberation of Auschwitz on January 27, 1945 by Soviet troops. For a long time, Arukh tried to find his relatives. Only a few months later, he learned that they had been destroyed long before their release.

 

 

In 1989, the film Triumph of the Spirit was released, based on the life story of Arukh. Salamo was played by William Dafoe. It was reported that Arukh was one of the film's consultants, but the picture was in great contrast to what it actually was.

The film shows that he ends up in a death camp with his bride, although in fact he found his wife only in 1945, when he was looking for relatives. It is also not true that he lived in the same barrack with his father and brother. In reality, there was no ring where Jews fought. And then there are a number of inconsistencies in historical facts.

According to the plot, Arukh allegedly recognizes in the commandant of Auschwitz a former colleague - a German boxer who performed at the Olympics in Berlin in 1936, and Salamo himself admits that he was part of the Greek national team. This could not be, because at the time of the Berlin Games, Aruch was only 13 years old. The film shows only a few fights, which take no more than five minutes of the total timing of two hours.

After the end of the war, Aruch moved first to Palestine, and after the creation of Israel - to Tel Aviv, where he successfully realized himself as an entrepreneur, becoming the owner of a shipping company. He spent four more fights, and after suffering the first and only defeat in his career, he hung up his gloves on a nail.

Arukh married a 17-year-old concentration camp prisoner, and they had four children. Salamo never made his professional debut, but in Israel he was a local superstar and legendary boxer.

 

 

Despite the feat in Auschwitz, there were those who did not approve of the battles of a Jew against other Jews for the amusement of the Nazis. Aruch found an answer to critics:

“If I had found out then or someone had told me that my whole family was no longer alive, I would not have fought. Yes, I would have been shot or sent to the gas chamber, but the belief that at least one of my relatives survived gave me the strength of mind to continue to fight for my life for their sake. I think if you were in my place, you would have done the same. "

Salamo Aruh died on April 26, 2009 at the age of 86.