"This fascinating account deserves recognition as a distinctive contribution to the literature on the Holocaust, the plight of Jewish survivors in post-war Poland and Germany, and, more generally, European and American Jewish history."—East European Jewish Affairs
"The book chronicles the life of a man who was a true survivor."—The Ring
"[This] is the unique biography of a Jewish man who survived the Nazi concentration camps while being forced by brutal German officers to fight his fellow prisoners—to lose was to die. . . . Harry Haft: Survivor of Auschwitz, Challenger of Rocky Marciano gives a complete picture of a flawed yet courageous human being, a survivor beyond measure, and is highly recommended for biography and holocaust studies shelves."—Bookwatch
Description
Alan Scott Haft provides the first-hand testimony of his father, Harry Haft, a holocaust victim with a singular story of endurance, desperation, and unrequited love. Harry Haft was a sixteen-year-old Polish Jew when he entered a concentration camp in 1944. Forced to fight other Jews in bare-knuckle bouts for the perverse entertainment of SS officers, Harry quickly learned that his own survival depended on his ability to fight and win. Haft details the inhumanity of the “sport” in which he must perform in brutal contests for the officers. Ultimately escaping the camp, Haft’s experience left him an embittered and pugnacious young man.
Determined to find freedom, Haft traveled to America and began a career as a professional boxer, quickly finding success using his sharp instincts and fierce confidence. In a historic battle, Haft fights in a match with Rocky Marciano, the future undefeated heavyweight champion of the world. Haft’s boxing career takes him into the world of such boxing legends as Rocky Graziano, Roland La Starza, and Artie Levine, and he reveals new details about the rampant corruption at all levels of the sport.
In sharp contrast to Elie Wiesel’s scholarly, pious protagonist in Night, Harry Haft is an embattled survivor, challenging the reader’s capacity to understand suffering and find compassion for an antihero whose will to survive threatens his own humanity. Haft’s account, at once dispassionate and deeply absorbing, is an extraordinary story and an invaluable contribution to Holocaust literature.
Table of Contents
Forewords
The Threat
Part One: Nightmares
Born Lucky
The Occupation
Captured
Lost Hope
The Beating
Jew Animal
The Cannibals
The Escape
The Whorehouse
Heavyweight Champion
Part Two: Dreams
Uncle Sam
Training
Harlem
Washington, D.C.
Career Bouts
Training for Marciano
Fighting Rocky
Moving On
Finding Leah
Afterword
About the Author
Alan Scott Haft is the eldest son of Harry Haft. He graduated from Queens College and received his J.D. from the University of Miami Law School.
March 2020