Jacko Razon

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Yaakov Razon ( Greek Ιακώβ Ραζόν , born February 2, 1921 in Thessaloniki ; died July 9, 1997 ), known as Jacko Razon , was a Greek boxer who survived the Holocaust and then emigrated to Palestine .

Life

Together with Salamo Arouch , Marco Azouz , Dino Uziel and others, Razon belonged to the undefeated Maccabi team, which won the Greek boxing championships in 1939. According to Sports in Greece , two thirds of the best boxers in Thessaloniki are said to have belonged to this team. Razon was also the goalkeeper of the Thessaloniki football club Olympiakos , which played in the Greek National League.

Razon studied, it is not known which field of study, when the Axis powers invaded , occupied and divided Greece into three zones in 1941 . The German Wehrmacht held Thessaloniki, among other things, Razon was arrested in 1942 and interned in the Baron Hirsch Ghetto . In 1943 he was deported from Thessaloniki to the Auschwitz concentration camp . He survived the selection at the ramp and was sent to Auschwitz III concentration camp , also known as Monowitz or Buna labor camp , after two months . There he organized boxing matches for the SS guards, and his team included both Jews and non-Jews, professionals and amateurs. One of his boxers was Victor Perez , known as Jung-Perez , a Jewish boxer from Tunisia. During the day Razon worked in the camp kitchen, in the evening he trained his team. He himself often had to compete against boxers of higher weight classes and won a large number of his fights. Several sources have shown that Jacko Razon supported numerous fellow inmates, which he was able to do through his work in the camp kitchen, and helped them survive.

In 1945 the camp was evacuated and the concentration camp inmates were sent on death marches . His boxer colleague Victor Perez died on a short stop in the Gleiwitz subcamp . The next march led to the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp and Razon also had to fight there for boxing matches. Since he only received small additional rations there, he was hardly able to support fellow inmates. The last station was the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp , where Razon was allowed to work in the kitchen again and where he was able to send small extra rations to Greek Jews - amid the great famine in this concentration camp. He was liberated by the British in May 1945 and taken to a temporary camp in Celle.

After his return to Greece, Razon lived in a hachshara facility in Athens until at least 1946 . He then led a group of Holocaust survivors who wanted to immigrate illegally to the British Mandate of Palestine . They traveled on the Henrietta Szold , a ship of the Palmach , named after the early Zionist Henrietta Szold , towards Haifa . There were 356 passengers on board. The ship was stopped by the Royal Navy and Razon is said to have initiated a revolt against the British, which was, of course, suppressed. Razon and a number of other passages were deported to Cyprus and interned there for several months in the Karaolos and Dekelia camps. He did manage to get to Palestine, where he took part in the Palestine War and was one of the co-founders of the Organization of Greek Holocaust Survivors.

After the Holocaust memories of Salamo Arouch , his former boxer colleague in Thessaloniki, who had also survived the Holocaust , were filmed under the title Triumph of the Spirit in 1989, Razon sued the film producers and Arouch for $ 20 million. He claimed they stole his story. The case was later settled out of court with a payment of $ 30,000.

On June 29, 1995, he gave an hour and 49 minute interview to the Shoah Foundation in Tel Aviv . The conversation was conducted in Hebrew.

On April 16, 2015, he was honored with the Jewish Rescuers Citation at a ceremony in Yad Vashem . The reason given was that he helped other Jews to survive in Auschwitz, Buna and Buchenwald.

swell

  • Jewish Virtual Library: Razon, Jacko , written by Yitzhak Kerem, accessed March 5, 2016

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Jews rescuing Jews during the Holocaust: Jacko Razon , accessed August 25, 2019
  2. ↑ In Steven Bowman's book The Agony of Greek Jews, 1940-1945 , his name is given as: Yaakov (Zhako) Rozen.
  3. ^ Jewish Museum Thessaloniki : Greek Jews in Sport: The contribution of Thessaloniki , accessed on March 7, 2015
  4. ↑ Yad Vashem : Holocaust Martyrs 'and Heroes' Remembrance Day 2007. Torchlighters 2007: Yaacov (Jacki) Handeli , accessed March 28, 2016
  5. ↑ Matt Schudel: Obituary: Salamo Arouch, Boxer Fought for His Life at Auschwitz ( memento of October 2, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) , Washington Post , May 1, 2009 (engl.)
  6. ↑ USC Shoah Foundation Institute: USC Shoah Foundation Institute testimony of Jacko Razon , accessed March 28, 2016
personal data
SURNAME Razon, Jacko
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Razon, Yaakov; Ραζόν, Ιακώβ (Greek)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Greek-Israeli boxer and Holocaust survivor
DATE OF BIRTH February 2, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Thessaloniki
DATE OF DEATH July 9, 1997