Boxing to live

In that question—and in the answer—was the destiny of several lives.

“Who knows how to box?” asked a Nazi soldier to the group of people who had just arrived at Auschwitz.

The question hung in the air for a few seconds, inserted between shouts, orders and false promises.

Surrounded by extremely thin human beings, with sunken eyes.

The newcomers do not know it, but they step on ashes.

Prisoner Noah Klieger, number 172345 raises his hand.

He doesn't know why he has done it.

There is something in the environment that pushes him to do it.

“I had a feeling.

It was something visceral.

I didn't think with my brain, I did it with my gut.

I told myself that, if they wanted boxers, it must be for something good,” Klieger himself explained 75 years later to journalist José Ignacio Pérez, author of the book

(Corner).

More information

Auschwitz as it has never been seen: the Nazi camp, its history and its secrets in 33 objects

Boxing was a sport with great prestige among Nazism.

In

, Hitler praised him in a way that most likely made him more popular among officers and soldiers.

More than a million people were murdered in the concentration camp located in Poland.

In the midst of that extermination, that lack of humanity, life made its way through small cracks that became the path to survival for many.

In Auschwitz there was a boxing hall with a ring and sandbags.

A gym in a place designed for the mass annihilation of people.

A space where combats were held and attended by hundreds of members of the SS.

Something that, almost all survivors agree, is difficult to understand for someone who has not experienced it.

Through the written and oral testimonies of several concentration camp survivors, the author reconstructs the shocking story of the prisoners who had to box to save their lives.

A story about the concatenation of small miracles that led some of them to survive.

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