My father nodded, and almost no other words were exchanged between them as the man accepted the amount my father had originally offered.
My father’s buyers were almost all gentiles, mostly from Berlin, although some hailed from Switzerland, France, the Netherlands, and even England. I overheard my father speaking snippets of various languages as he conducted these deals. With buyers, he always managed to maintain an air of jollity and excitement about the art, charming and convincing them of the works’ merits and value. As soon as the client left, his beaming expression melted into a hard scowl, and he’d complain bitterly to my mother about the vultures coming to pick at our bones.
Life at school continued to be difficult, but for the most part I had learned to avoid the Wolf Pack. Also, word of my boxing training and my association with Max Schmeling had spread and earned me a certain measure of respect. Principal Munter continued to encourage all the boys in school to sign up for the Hitler Youth. It seemed as though with each weekly assembly, more and more uniform shirts appeared, spreading out like a beige rash.
Finally even Kurt and Hans showed up at school wearing brand-new Hitler Youth belt buckles made of polished chrome. Although I was not surprised, I did feel a sharp pinch of betrayal. They didn’t talk to me about joining, and I didn’t ask questions. Kurt noticed me staring at the belt buckle, and he confused my envy with anger. Now I would be one of the only students at school who didn’t belong. Kurt tried to defend their joining up.
“It’s just like the Scouts, really,” he said. “It’s not a big deal.”
He had no idea that I just wished I could have a belt buckle of my own and wear the uniform like everyone else.
One night I came home from my afternoon workout at the gym to find my parents out.
“Hallo?” I called, but no one answered.
I heard the sound of muffled sniffling. I walked down the hall and opened the door to Hildy’s room and discovered her crying, staring at the ceiling, clutching her stuffed rabbit, Herr Karotte. She immediately turned away from the door.
“Get out!” she said.
“What is it?”
“Nothing.”
She buried her head in her pillow. I sat beside her.
“Just go away, Spatz!”
“Come on, you can tell me.”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me, Winzig,” I said.
Finally she rolled over. Her nose was red, and her eyes were puffy from crying.
“The girls at school . . . they call me a rotten apple.”
“A rotten apple?”
“Yes. It’s because of that dumb book that we all have to read.”
“What book?”
She handed me an illustrated children’s book titled The Rotten Apples. The front cover featured an image of a cherubic-looking young Aryan girl standing beside an apple tree. The tree was filled with beautiful apples, except some of the apples had strange human faces with large noses and droopy eyes. I flipped open the book and read.
The Rotten Apples by Norbert Aufklitenburg
One day little Elsa and her mother decided to make an apple strudel.
So they traveled to the fruit market in their village and purchased a small basket of bright red apples.
On the way home they passed a dirty old Jew who tried to get them to come into his shop.
The Jew dressed in shabby black clothes and had a hooked nose and wet red lips that he kept licking like an animal.
“Come to my store, little girl,” the Jew said. “I have toys for you. Good prices.”
Elsa’s mother quickly threw an arm around Elsa and pulled her daughter along.
When Elsa and her mother arrived back home, they set to preparing the apples in the kitchen.
“Mama, why couldn’t we go into that man’s store?” Elsa asked innocently.
“That man was a Jew,” her mother explained patiently. “And you should never trust a Jew. They will cheat and rob you, and they do terrible things to girls and boys.”
Elsa looked confused. So, seizing the basket of apples, her mother decided to teach her an important lesson.
“Think of this basket of apples as Germany. There are so many beautiful, firm, strong apples. Those are the Aryans, like you, Papa, and me. But every so often you find a rotten apple, like this one.”
She pulled out an apple from the bottom of the basket. “See how it is brown and soft here. The flesh is putrid inside. You wouldn’t want one of these apples in your strudel, would you?
“Well, Jews are like rotten apples. Just like a bruised apple, they have marks on them, like their hooked noses, red lips, and curly dark hair. You should always be on the lookout and avoid them.”
“But what if the apple . . . I mean, the Jew looks the same as us on the outside?”
“Those are the worst kind of Jews,” her mother answered. “It is like an apple with a worm that has crawled in through a tiny hole that you can’t even see from the outside.”
“What can we do about it?” Elsa asked, frightened.
“Well, what do you do if you find a worm in your apple?” her mother asked patiently.
“Cut it out with a knife?”
“Exactly,” said her mother. “And that is exactly what the Führer is doing with the Jews, cutting them out of Germany so we can all be pure and free.”
Elsa smiled.
“Now, let’s bake that strudel.”
THE END
I looked at some of the illustrations, and a sinking feeling washed over me as I recognized an undeniable similarity between Hildy and the hideous Jewish apples.
“I’m an ugly rotten apple just like the book. Look at my nose and my eyes and my hair.”
“There’s nothing wrong with the way you look.”
“You’re lying. I look like a Jew. Everyone says so.”
She was right, of course. I was lying. As much as it pained me to admit it to myself, I hated how Jewish Hildy and my father looked. My mother and I could both easily pass for gentiles, and our daily lives were easier for it. At school I had to avoid the Wolf Pack, but almost anywhere else I could walk the streets without the risk of being harassed. Except for Max, no one at the Berlin Boxing Club knew or suspected I was Jewish. But with Hildy and my father there was no doubt, and when they walked the streets, they were subject to taunts and catcalls nearly every day now. I worried that they were exposing us all.
“Look at me, Hildy.”
I lifted her chin so she looked directly in my eyes.
“You have beautiful eyes, a beautiful nose, and beautiful hair. I told you before, you’re starting to look like Louise Brooks.”
“Stop lying, Spatz! Louise Brooks doesn’t have an ugly nose and glasses.”
“Winzig . . .”
“Go away. All you care about is boxing anyway. Ever since you started that stupid training, you never have time for me.”
“That’s not true.”
“Get out of my room!”
She buried her face in her pillow again. I touched her shoulder, but she flinched and pulled away.
“Go away!”
I couldn’t think of anything to say. I had always possessed the magical power to make her feel better, but now I felt stymied and angry. I was mad at myself because I knew so much of what she said was right. I had become completely swept up in my own life and hadn’t been spending any time with her.
All my rage focused on the book. I ripped open the cover and pulled out all the pages from the spine with one powerful jerk. Hildy gasped. Books were sacred objects in our home, and we were both shocked by what I had done.
“Come on,” I said.
I took the pieces of the book, grabbed her hand, and led her out of the apartment. She wasn’t wearing her shoes, but I pulled her down the stairs until we got all the way to the basement. I led her to the furnace, whose burning coals cast a red glow across the room, and carefully opened the metal door with the tongs and handed her the book.
She hesitated.
“Go on. They burn books. So can we. Throw it in.”
She cautiously stepped forward and tentatively tossed the cover into the open mouth of the furnace. It landed just inside the door, and I had to poke it with the tongs so it slid back toward the burning coal. We both silently watched as the book cover caught fire and blue, green, and yellow flames turned the cover illustration of the apple tree into black ash.
Hildy stepped forward and threw in the two remaining pieces of the book. The paper instantly burst into flame. Yellow fire danced in her eyes, which were misted over with tears. She turned away from the furnace and fell into my arms, sobbing. Anger rose inside me as I watched the flames devour the book. I hated Norbert Aufklitenburg for writing such an awful piece of filth and causing the girls to taunt my sister. I hated Hitler and the Nazis for turning our entire country against us. Most of all, I hated myself for being blind to Hildy’s suffering.
That night I let her do her homework in my room, and for the first time in a long time drew her a Winzig und Spatz cartoon to try to cheer her up. It wasn’t my best work, but at least it got her to smile again.
The Secret History of Jewish Boxers
THE VERY NEXT DAY, AS I MADE MY WAY TO THE CLUB TO train for my first real fight, I came across two young Nazi brownshirts standing in front of Herr Greenberg’s art supply store. Little more than teenagers, they wore sharp uniforms and polished jackboots. One of the boys held a large can of paste while the other dipped a thick paintbrush into the can and slathered a sticky layer across Herr Greenberg’s window.
Through the glass, I could see Herr Greenberg’s panicked expression become obscured behind the milky white paste, then blocked altogether as one of the boys slapped a poster onto the sticky spot. The sign simply read don’t buy from jews!
A moment later Herr Greenberg emerged from his store.
“Stop!”
The boys simply ignored him.
“Stop that now!” Herr Greenberg repeated.
“What are you going to do about it, Jew?” asked one of the boys.
“I’ll call the police,” Herr Greenberg replied.
“Yes, go to the police.” One of them laughed.
“The chief of the local precinct is also the head of our SA division,” the other added.
He was a tall blond kid with bad acne scars along the sides of his cheeks. Herr Greenberg studied the boy with a slow-dawning expression.
“I know you,” he said. “You’re Gertrude Schmidt’s boy.”
The boy stiffened at the mention of his mother.
“Do you know she has been a customer of mine since before you were born? And so was your grandmother. You live just a few blocks from here. I know who you are.”
The boy looked shocked. The other boy elbowed him in the ribs. “Are you going to let a Jew talk to you like that?”
The first boy continued to stare at Herr Greenberg. I couldn’t read his expression, which could have been indignation, embarrassment, or rage. Finally the boy straightened his posture, took a deep breath, approached the old man, and spat directly in his face.
“Don’t you ever mention my mother’s name again.”
Then he turned and threw his paintbrush into the can, and both boys walked away.
I approached Herr Greenberg as he wiped the spittle off the side of his cheek.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“The world is going crazy, Karl. And when the world is crazy, a sane man is never okay.”
He turned to his big plate glass window. The poster had already started to dry.
“He used to play with modeling clay,” he muttered to himself.
“Huh?” I said.
“Modeling clay. That’s what his mother would buy, so he could make little zoo animals. I never forget my customers.”
“Can I help?” I offered.
“No,” he said with a sigh as he tried to rip the poster off the window. Only a small corner came off in his hand.
“I’m going to have to use a razor to get rid of it.”
He balled up the small piece of paper he had been able to rip off, threw it in the gutter, and went inside to retrieve the razor.
Once I got to the gym, I unloaded all my shame and rage onto the heavy bag. Jab, jab, uppercut. Jab, jab, uppercut. Jab, jab, uppercut. I let out small grunts of release with each hit, so I could hear as well as feel the primitive cadence echoing in my chest and throat. I punched until my shoulders ached and my wrists felt like they were on the verge of snapping, venting my frustrations and anxieties onto the thick leather skin of the bag. Uppercuts gave me the most visceral satisfaction, as I used more of my entire body to pound my fist into the body of the bag, pivoting my legs just right so that the power came from my thighs and torso just like Max had taught me.
After finishing my workout, I was toweling off in the locker room when something on a small table beside Neblig’s supply closet caught my eye. The table held a neat pile of clean towels and a large stack of sports magazines, including Germany’s leading boxing magazine, Boxsport, as well as the American magazine The Ring. An illustration on the cover of an old copy of The Ring depicted two men squaring off, both wearing boxing trunks with Stars of David stitched on them.
I had been studying English at school for several years, so I was able to read the headline: “The Battle of the Hebrew Light Heavyweights.” I eagerly flipped open the magazine and read the cover story about the light heavyweight championship fight between Bob Olin and “Slapsie” Maxie Rosenbloom. The fight went fifteen long rounds before Olin was handed the decision and the world title. Not only was it a startling revelation for me that both of the fighters were Jews, but one paragraph of the article shocked me even more: “This was the first time that two Jewish brawlers have squared off for a world title in five years, since Maxie defeated Abie Bain with a KO in the 11th round of another classic bout. There have been ten ‘Jew on Jew’ championship bouts since the dawn of this century, and with Maxie, Olin, Barney Ross, Ben Jeby, and Solly Krieger all fighting at the top of their game, there might be plenty more where that came from.”
Not only were there other Jewish boxers out there in the world—but Jewish world champions? America seemed to be teeming with Jewish fighters. I stared at the photographs of Bob Olin and “Slapsie” Maxie Rosenbloom. They each had tightly muscled physiques along with dark hair and prominent noses. These were tough Jews, so different from the sniveling caricatures that I was seeing in the Nazi press all around me and the religious Jews, like Herr Greenberg, who I had been exposed to in my life. I saw in these men exactly who I longed to be, role models I hadn’t even known existed.
Neblig entered the locker room, and I quickly shut the magazine before he could see what I was reading. I still did not want anyone to know I was Jewish, not even Neblig.
“Hi, K-k-k-k-karl,” he said.
“Oh, hi, Neblig,” I replied as casually as possible. “Could I borrow some of these copies of The Ring? I’m trying to work on my English, and it’s good practice.”
“S-s-s-s-sure,” he said. “Just make sure to bring them back.”
I grabbed a stack of magazines, and that night in bed I flipped through every issue, looking for more stories on Jewish fighters. Four minority groups—Italians, Irishmen, blacks, and Jews—dominated American boxing. Sure enough, I turned up several articles along with photographs of more chiseled Jewish warriors.
The story that most captured my attention was a huge profile of Barney Ross, whose father had been an Orthodox rabbi. As a boy Ross had aspired to follow in his pacifist father’s footsteps and become a great Talmudic scholar. Yet Ross’s world turned upside down when his father was killed during an armed robbery and Ross and his brothers and sisters were sent to live with relatives or in orphanages. Ross transformed and hardened himself into a street thug and a fighter, vowing to reunite his family through his success in the ring.
He became one of the few fighters in history to hold three championship belts: lightweight, junior welterweight, and welterweight. The story of Ross’s almost magical transformation from a meek rabbi’s son to a muscle-bound champion hit me with a stunning force. The magazine featured a full-page photograph of Ross in a fighter’s stance, his bare hands curled into fists, glaring at the camera with his dark hair neatly combed against his head. I carefully ripped out the page and pasted it up on my wall for inspiration. I figured Neblig would never notice one missing page.
I immediately set about drawing a caricature of my new hero. His face was angular and handsome, and there was a tough, determined set to his eyes that I had never tried to capture before in any of my other drawings. As I explored his face, it took on so many virtues to me: pride, confidence, rage. He had none of Max’s easygoing smile lines. Fighting wasn’t just a sport to this guy; he fought to survive and for his family. After finishing the caricature, I started to sketch out the beginnings of a comic strip about Barney Ross too. Unlike Joe Palooka or my own Danny Dooks, Barney Ross was a real person whose very existence seemed to defend Jews all around the world. If Barney Ross could do it, so could I.
The profile I read was written in anticipation of an upcoming fight against one of Ross’s greatest rivals, Jimmy McClarnin, set for May of 1935. I realized that the fight had already happened, but none of the magazines I had reported the results. I had to find out who had won. The next day I went back to the club and hunted through the recent magazines and newspapers in the locker room but didn’t turn up anything. What if Ross had lost the championship? Would that be a bad omen for Jews everywhere?
I didn’t want to risk asking anyone, for fear my interest in Ross would expose my Jewishness. Luckily the guys in the gym were always talking about the other fighters, and I overheard Worjyk, Willy, and Johann discussing a new fighter on the scene named Joe Louis.
“I’m telling you, he’s the one who’s going to take Jimmy Braddock’s heavyweight belt before Max even has the chance,” Worjyk said.
The Berlin Boxing Club Page 10