Salamo Arouch Jewish boxer of Greek descent Country: Greece

Biography of Salamo Arouch

Salamo Arouch was a Jewish boxer of Greek descent who survived the Holocaust in Auschwitz thanks to his boxing talent, entertaining the Nazis with boxing matches. A movie about his life, "Triumph of the Spirit," was released in 1989. Salamo Arouch was born in 1923 in Thessaloniki, Greece. He grew up with his brother and three sisters in a family of Greek port workers. His father, who was a dockworker, introduced Arouch to boxing at a young age and taught him the sport. Arouch claimed to have won his first boxing match at the age of 14. Despite being 168 cm tall, he became the Balkan champion in the middleweight division in 1941 at the age of 17. There was a possibility that Arouch would have competed in the Olympic Games as part of the Greek team, but the Games were canceled due to the war. In 1943, his family was sent to a concentration camp. In Auschwitz, Arouch became prisoner number 136954 and luckily avoided the gas chamber. One of the officers in the camp organized boxing matches among the newly arrived prisoners, and Arouch became one of the participants. Once the Nazis recognized his abilities, he had to fight two or three times a week against other inmates. According to Arouch, no one was able to defeat him during his time in Auschwitz, although he had two matches that ended in a draw after recovering from dysentery. The winner of each fight received extra rations or lighter work, while the loser was sent to the gas chamber or executed. Arouch estimated that he won 208 fights, which meant that 208 of his opponents were killed in Auschwitz. The fights would continue until there was only one boxer left in the ring or until the Nazis grew tired of watching. The guards would bet large sums of money on the fighters. Arouch mentioned that he weighed around 135 pounds (61 kg) in the camp and often fought against much larger men. Once, he knocked out an opponent weighing 250 pounds (113 kg) in just 18 seconds. With the extra rations he received, Arouch would help feed members of his family, hoping that they would survive the horrors of the concentration camp. Arouch indeed survived the war and witnessed the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet troops on January 27, 1945. However, his mother, father, brother, and sisters did not live to see their liberation. In April 1945, while searching for his family in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, Arouch met Marta Yechiel, a seventeen-year-old Jewish girl also from Salonika. They immigrated to Israel together and settled in Tel Aviv, where Arouch became a manager in a delivery company. Salamo and Marta got married in November 1945 and raised four children. In 1989, Arouch served as a consultant during the filming of "Triumph of the Spirit," a dramatic reconstruction of his life in the concentration camp. He accompanied the film's creators on several trips to the camp. Although the film accurately depicted the conditions in which the prisoners were held, some artistic liberties were taken regarding Arouch's life. For instance, his future wife was given a different name and portrayed as a bride who arrived at Auschwitz at the same time as Arouch. The role of Arouch was played by American actor Willem Dafoe. After the release of the movie, another Jewish boxer from Salonika, Jacques "Jacko" Razon, sued Arouch and the filmmakers for more than 20 million dollars. Razon claimed that his story was stolen by the filmmakers and that Arouch intentionally exaggerated his actions. The case was settled in 1995, with Razon receiving $30,000. Salamo Arouch passed away on April 26, 2009, at the age of 86.