Tadeusz Pietrzykowski

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Tadeusz Pietrzykowski ( April 8, 1917 in Warsaw - April 17, 1991 in Bielsko-Biała ), often called Teddy , was a Polish soldier and boxer who survived several concentration camps.

Life

Pietrzykowski didn't learn boxing until he was 20. His boxing teacher, Feliks Stamm , taught him the meaning of the Polish creed God, Honor, Fatherland and is said to have raised him to be a gentleman boxer . He fought in the bantam weight class (52 to 53 kg).

In 1939 he took part in the defense of Warsaw against the German troops, after the surrender of Poland in 1940 Pietrzykowski wanted to make his way to France to join the resistance there, but he was caught on the Hungarian-Yugoslav border. With the first mass transport on June 14, 1940, he was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp that had just opened . There he played 37 boxing matches as a Sunday pleasure for the SS guards, often against much higher weight classes. The SS men organized sports betting for these fights. Pietrzykowski remained unbeaten 35 times and was only unable to win against Dutchman Leen Sanders . His fellow inmate Tadeusz Sobolewicz , who was also able to survive several concentration camps, later described one of his fights and characterized him as the hope of the Polish inmates in the concentration camp . His boxing successes were rewarded with supplementary food, which subsequently made his survival easier. He was on friendly terms with his fellow prisoner, Walter Düning , who he also had to fight against. According to Hermann Langbein in his book People in Auschwitz , after he was beaten by Pietrzykowski in the ring, he is said to have given him not only the bread promised by the SS, but also margarine and sausage. Düning also made sure that his Polish boxer colleague got work in the cowshed, which was beneficial to his diet.

In a book about Maximilian Kolbe, Francis Mary Kalvelage describes the priest's encounters with the boxer, in which the priest urged the boxer to be non-violent (although Pietrzykowski only wanted to defend Kolbe and save him from further abuse): "Don't hit your brother, my son!" In a later interview, Pietrzykowski remembered Kolbe's unusual reaction, he lacked the words “as if I had no tongue in my mouth”.

In 1943 he was transferred to the Neuengamme concentration camp . The local chef provided boxing gloves for Pietrzykowski, according to Langbein. He is said to have fought about 20 boxing matches in Neuengamme.

He was relocated again and was taken to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp , which was liberated by British troops in April 1945. After 1945, Pietrzykowski organized sports training in the Polish army.

Book and film

Józef Hen's novel Bokser i śmierć (The Boxer and Death), the book was also published in German in 1964, tells the story of Pietrzykowski's time in the concentration camps .

In 1962, Czechoslovakian director Peter Solan wrote and directed the critically acclaimed film Boxer a smrť , based on Hen's novel. However, the boxer's name in the film is Ján Komínek . The main actors in the film are Štefan Kvietik and Manfred Krug . In 1989 Robert M. Young directed the Hollywood film Triumph of the Spirit , which was based on the life story of the Greek boxer Salamo Arouch , but was sometimes viewed as a remake of Solan's film.

literature

  • Joanna Cieślak, Antoni Molenda: Tadeusz Pietrzykowski "Teddy": 1917–1991 , Tow. Opieki nad Oświęcimiem, Oddz. Wojewódzki, 1995 (105 pages)
  • Tadeusz Sobolewicz : Back from hell: From the arbitrariness of survival in the concentration camp , S. Fischer Verlag, 30 Nov 2011 (256 pages)
  • Józef Hens Roman Bokser: The Boxer and Death , Langen / Müller, 1964

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Francis Mary Kalvelage: Kolbe - Saint of the Immaculata , Academy of the Immaculate, 2001, 131 ff.
  2. ↑ Au camp d'Auschwitz, la boxe fut aussi un moyen pour survivre ( French ) In: L'Express . December 24, 2012. Retrieved March 9, 2016.
  3. ↑ Teddy, le gladiateur d'Auschwitz ( French ) In: Le Figaro . December 24, 2012. Retrieved March 9, 2016.
  4. ^ Hermann Langbein: People in Auschwitz . Univ of North Carolina Press, 2004, ISBN 9780807828168 , p. 130.
  5. ^ Andrzej Fedorowicz: Gladiatorzy z obozów śmierci . In: Focus . Archived from the original on January 21, 2015. 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. Retrieved March 9, 2016. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / historia.focus.pl
  6. ^ Hermann Langbein: People in Auschwitz , 130
  7. ^ Francis Mary Kalvelage: Kolbe - Saint of the Immaculata , Academy of the Immaculate, 2001, 131 ff.
  8. ^ Hermann Langbein: People in Auschwitz , 130
  9. ↑ Martin Krauss in: Reinhard Kleist - Der Boxer, Hamburg 2012
  10. ^ Annette Insdorf: Indelible Shadows: Film and the Holocaust . Cambridge University Press, 2003, ISBN 9780521016308 , p. 55.
  11. ^ Adam Cyra: Bokser i śmierć ( Memento from January 22, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) , Miejsce Pamięci i Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau, accessed on March 8, 2016
personal data
SURNAME Pietrzykowski, Tadeusz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pietrzykowski, Teddy
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish boxer and survivor of several concentration camps
DATE OF BIRTH April 8, 1917
PLACE OF BIRTH Warsaw
DATE OF DEATH April 17, 1991
Place of death Bielsko-Biała