Szapsel Rotholc

Szapsel Rotholc

Szapsel Rotholc , also Stanisław Rotholc , Szapsia Rotholc or Stanley Rotholc , (* 2. July 1913 in Warsaw , Russian Empire ; † 1996 in Montreal , Canada ) was a Polish amateur - boxer .

Athletic career

Szapsel Rotholc, printer by trade, was a member of the Zionist workers' sports club Gwiazda Warsaw . The petite, light man became the Polish featherweight champion in 1933, making him the first Jewish boxing champion in Poland. In 1934 he won the bronze medal at the European Boxing Championships in Budapest and became international champion of Chicago . He took part in all country fights in Poland from 1934 to 1939 and won 15 of a total of 16 fights.

In 1934, in protest against National Socialism , Rotholc refused to go into the ring as a member of a Polish team against German boxers. He started the fight only on the instructions of the Polish Boxing Association and won against Werner Spannagel . In 1936 Rotholc was again refused by the German side to box in an international match in Berlin . He was an idol for the Jewish sports community in Poland, as he symbolized the “defensive Jews”, but was also very popular with all Poles, as his successes against German boxers were seen as victories for “David against Goliath”.

In 1936, Szapsel Rotholc did not want to take part in the Olympic Games in Berlin . However, since he was a soldier at the time, his superiors ordered him to box. He traveled to Berlin, but did not appear; how it ultimately came about is not known. Nevertheless, he was expelled from the Jewish sports association, although he had officially apologized for his trip to Berlin. From the beginning of 1939, Rotholc was increasingly confronted with anti-Semitism and finally passed over in the nomination for the European championships. In March of this year he had his last fight in a country comparison with Italy , which he lost, also because the referee is said to have been anti-Semitic and disaffected with him. Afterwards he never boxed again.

During the Second World War

In autumn 1939 it was reported that Rotholc had died during the attack on Poland . In February 1940 it was said that he was still alive. He was captured by the Germans, but could have escaped.

There are two different accounts of the following events: According to research by Yad Vashem , he fled the Warsaw ghetto with his wife Maria (* 1920) and their son Ryszard (* 1939) , and the family was formed by two brothers, Zdzisław and Tadeusz Mańkowski, hidden with her mother. Each of them later took part in the family. In 1944 the hiding place in the apartment of Tadeusz Mańkowskis, where he and Maria Rotholc were staying, was revealed; the Gestapo found and murdered them both in the forest of Kawęczyn . Rotholc and his son managed to escape to a new hiding place again, and Zdzisław Mańkowski did not reveal them despite being tortured by the Gestapo. All three survived the end of the war; Zdzisław and Tadeusz Mańkowski (posthumously) were awarded the honorary title “ Righteous Among the Nations ” in 1989.

According to a description in the Haaretz magazine from 2011, which is based on more recent findings by the German historian Diethelm Blecking , Rotholc stayed with his family in the ghetto and became a member of the local Jewish security service , smuggled and traded on the black market. After the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto , he was deported to a labor camp in Essen . His wife was murdered while his son survived in the care of a Catholic family, the Mańkowskis.

After the war

After the war, according to the Haaretz , Szapsel Rotholc had to answer to the Polish Central Committee of Jews for his work in the ghetto for collaboration with the Germans, although there were different representations of his behavior at the time: some witnesses said he had hit people mercilessly Others reported that he had saved Jewish resistance members from deportation, including the former president of his sports club, Nehemia Tytelman , who collected documents of the resistance and Jewish life in the ghetto for the Oneg Shabbat underground archive and was finally murdered in 1943. In November 1946, Rotholc was expelled from the Jewish community for two years and lost his rights within the community for three years. During the process he was supported by the Polish Boxing Federation, other athletes and officials. In June 1948 he was restituted as a member of the Jewish Sports Association and met his son again in the same year. Father and son emigrated to Canada, where Rotholc remarried and worked as a fur trader. There he called himself Stanley Rotholc .

novel

In April 2014, the book Knockout was published in Sweden , in which the author Grzegorz Flakieski tells the fate of Rotholc in a novel-like manner.

literature

• Diethelm Blecking: The boxer and death: The example of Szapsel Rotholc , in: Diethelm Blecking , Lorenz Peiffer (ed.) Athletes in the "Century of Camps". Profiteers, resistors and victims. Göttingen: Die Werkstatt, 2012, pp. 330–334.

Web links

• Diethelm Blecking : Rotholc, Stanisław. The Yivo Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, accessed April 28, 2014 . 

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Rotholz, Champion Boxer, Killed in Polish Campaign. JTA Archives, December 12, 1939, accessed April 27, 2014 . 
2. ↑ Szapsel Rotholc. sportuitslagen.org, accessed April 27, 2014 . 
3. ↑ ^{a b} International dual matches results. amateur-boxing.strefa.pl, accessed on April 27, 2014 . 
4. ^ The Montreal Gazette , January 9, 1936. p. 13
5. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Uri Talshir: The jewel of Jewish boxing. Haaretz, May 2, 2011, accessed April 27, 2014 . 
6. ^ Polish Jewish Boxing Champion Forced to Join Olympic Squad. JTA Archives, July 30, 1936, accessed April 27, 2014 . 
7. ^ Poland Boxing at the 1936 Berlin Summer Games. sports-reference.com, accessed April 27, 2014 . 
8. ↑ Kay Schaffer, Sidonie Smith (Ed.): The Olympics at the Millennium: Power, Politics, and the Games . The State University, Rutgers 2000, pp. 58 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
9. ^ Rotholz, Champion Boxer, Reported Alive in Soviet Poland. JTA Archives, February 16, 1940, accessed April 27, 2014 . 
10. ↑ Mańkowski FAMILY. Yad Vashem, accessed April 27, 2014 . 
11. ^ Diethelm Blecking: Jews and Sports in Poland before the Second World War . In: Ezra Mendelsohn (Ed.): Jews and the Sporting Life . Institute of Contemporary Jewry, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, S. 27 ff . ( limited preview in Google Book search).
12. ^ Samuel Kassow : Ringelblums Legacy: The Secret Archives of the Warsaw Ghetto . ( limited preview in Google Book Search - Kindle Edition).
13. ↑ Canadian Jewish Review , February 15, 1963 ( Memento of the original from April 29, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
14. ^ Elisabeth Brännström: Literature: Grzegorz Flakieski; Knockout. April 19, 2014, accessed April 27, 2014 (Swedish).