Salamo Arouch

Salamo Arouch ( Greek Σολομόν Αρούχ , born January 1, 1923 in Thessaloniki ; died April 26, 2009 in Tel Aviv ) was a Greek - Israeli boxer and survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp .

Life

Salamo Arouch came from a fishing family. As a child he began boxing in sports competitions. He won his first competition when he was 14 years old. Together with Marco Azouz , Jacko Razon , Dino Uziel and others, he 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. In 1941 he was the 18-year-old Balkan middleweight champion. Like his father and brother, he earned his living as a dock worker . Until his deportation he is said to have remained undefeated in 24 fights. Because of his excellent footwork, he was also called "The Ballet Dancer".

In 1943 he was with his family in the concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau deported . All of his family's wives and children were gassed on the day of their arrival . His brother was shot because he refused to remove gold teeth from corpses. The father was also murdered in the gas chamber because of his physical weakness.

Arouch claims to have played more than 200 boxing matches at Auschwitz to amuse the guards who were waiting for blood to flow. For every victory he received a loaf and was allowed to work in the kitchen. Most of the losers were shot or gassed. Boxing enabled him to survive. On January 27, 1945, the Auschwitz concentration camp was liberated by Soviet troops.

There are two versions of Arouch's deliverance.

• The New York Times and Washington Post write that he wasliberatedby the Red Army in Auschwitz, and this version is also told in the film. He then set out to look for surviving family members in other concentration camps. He met his future wife in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
• Haaretz writes that he was deported by the Nazis to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and had todo forced labor there- until the camp was liberated by the British army.

With his wife Marta Yechiel, who also came from Thessaloniki and had been deported, he moved to Palestine in 1945 . There he worked as a ship broker and boxed regularly. He remained undefeated, only his last fight against the Italian Amleto Falcinelli in Tel Aviv on June 8, 1955 he lost on points. His memories were filmed in 1989 with the title Triumph des Geistes . Arouch gave boxing lessons to the main actor in the film, Willem Dafoe . His boxer colleague from Thessaloniki, Jacko Razon , who had also survived the Holocaust , sued the film producers and Arouch for $ 20 million, claiming that they had stolen his story. The case was later settled out of court with a payment of $ 30,000.

He suffered a stroke in 1994 that made him dependent on care. He had four children and twelve grandchildren.

literature

• Diethelm Blecking: Salamo Arouch: The Jewish boxer who won in Auschwitz and survived. In: Diethelm Blecking , Lorenz Peiffer (ed.): Sportsmen in the "Century of the Camps". Profiteers, resistors and victims. Die Werkstatt, Göttingen 2012, pp. 346–348.

Web links

• Israel network
• Boxing against death ( Memento from April 27, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) in: Financial Times Deutschland
• Obituary in Haaretz , en
• Box wiki en
• Obituary in the Daily Telegraph , en

Individual evidence

1. ^ Jewish Museum Thessaloniki : Greek Jews in Sport: The contribution of Thessaloniki , accessed on March 7, 2015
2. ↑ Dennis Hevesi: Salamo Arouch, Who Boxed for His Life in Auschwitz, Is Dead at 86 , New York Times , May 3, 2009 (Eng.)
3. ↑ Matt Schudel: Obituary: Salamo Arouch, Boxer Fought for His Life at Auschwitz , Washington Post , May 1, 2009 (Eng.)