Harry Haft: Survivor of Auschwitz, Challenger of Rocky Marciano

by Alan Scott Haft and Alan Haft

Book Overview

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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0815611196
• ISBN13: 9780815611196
• Release Date: March 2020
• Publisher: Syracuse University Press
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.4" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

A Different Holocaust Memoir

This is an impressive addition to holocaust literature. The life of Harry Haft is well worth telling. When he entered Auschwitz he was forced to fight other Jews in bare-knuckle boxing bouts for the entertainment of the SS officers. These battles were usually fought to the death of one of the fighters. This is quite a different story than that usually told. He survived, and eventually escaped, likewise not a common occurance. He eventually made his way to America and decided to take his boxing skills into the professional arena here. In boxing at that time, the fighters were under the control of organized crime and he was eventually told to lose a match or he would lose his life. All of this left permanent mental scars on Mr. Haft that were never truly removed. This book is also a story of the life of his son, the author who in writing this probably understands his father better than he did before.

Highly recommended

Harry Haft: Survivor Of Auschwitz, Challenger Of Rocky Marciano 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. Haft was only sixteen when he was sent to the concentration camps; four years later, he barely escaped with his life, and killed German civilians while struggling to survive. Prone to fits of violent temper, made worse by the permanent scars of the unspeakably inhuman treatment he endured, Harry Haft decided to take his talent for fisticuffs into the professional boxing ring. But in an era when boxing was heavily infiltrated by organized crime, gangsters threatened Haft with execution unless he lost his fight with heavyweight champion Rocky Marciano. Written by Harry Haft's son, 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.