The remarkable life of Harry Haft — forced to fight for survival at Auschwitz, before going on to challenge the great Rocky Marciano
HARRY HAFT is not a name many boxing fans will recognise — which is a shame because this is someone who endured more than anyone who’s ever laced up the gloves, a young man who was quite literally forced to fight for his own survival.
Born Herschel Haft in Belchatow, Poland in 1925, Haft was Jewish and during the Nazi occupation of Poland, starting in 1939, he was incarcerated just shy of his sixteenth birthday.
Thereafter he was held at various camps before ending up at Auschwitz in 1942. There he was beaten, starved, and seemingly destined for death. However due to his natural strength and impressive physique — half starved notwithstanding — Haft was provided with a lifeline by an SS camp overseer, who selected him to take part in bareknuckle fights against other inmates for the entertainment of the officers. These fights were held at the Jaworzno concentration and labour camp, an Auschwitz sub-camp where the inmates worked at the coal mine that was located there.
Though it might make for a tidy good versus evil narrative to paint Haft as a saint in land of sinners, real life is far more complex, as are human beings — especially when forced to navigate an environment in…
