The final victory of Leone Efrati
On Nov. 17, 1939, two boxers met for the first time at centre ring in a darkened Milwaukee arena, the air blue with cigar and cigarette smoke. Their fight was the main event of the evening. The other fighters on the card were just beginning professional boxing careers. None would last long.
For 10 punishing rounds, the two strangers traded blows to the body and head. They were small men who fought with heart, not finesse. There was no high drama for the spectators; no knockouts or knock downs to trigger an adrenalin rush. Just two fighters doing what they could do. At the final bell, the judges awarded the decision to Hamilton hero and future Featherweight Champion Jackie Callura.
It had been a must-win fight for the other boxer, Leone Efrati, born in the old Jewish Ghetto of Rome. With a good boxing record in Italy and France, Efrati came to the United States in 1938, and did well in his first fights. Ranked 10th in the featherweight class by the National Boxing Association in 1939, he earned an important match against a top championship contender. Knocked down once, Efrati would lose that fight by unanimous decision.
His defeat marked a turning point in Efrati’s career. He would never win again. Efrati’s battle with Callura 11 months later was his last as a professional. With only temporary resident status in the United States, he returned to Rome, to his wife and three children, to a country at war, to a nation where the newly proclaimed racial laws of 1938 barred him from boxing and forced him into an uncertain underground existence.
This is how lives momentarily cross, then follow their own trajectories shaped by the forces of the times we live in.
Jackie Callura, son of Sicilian parents, was a child of the Depression, of hard times that offered immigrant and working-class kids few opportunities for success. Callura seized his chance in the boxing ring.
Leone Efrati was also marked by the Depression and turned to boxing for the same reasons. But for Efrati, a Jew, there were even more powerful and deadly forces at play. Barred from the ring, Efrati survived on his American winnings, his wits and his ventures in the underground economy. For four years he lived a shadow life in the back streets of the ghetto, a night life away from public gaze. Then in early May 1944, gambling that he might now be able to go unnoticed, Efrati took his seven-year-old son Romolo to buy an ice cream cone. It was a mistake that would exact a terrible price.
Identified by Fascist militia men, Efrati and the boy were imprisoned by the German SS and eventually loaded onto trucks with others bound for Fossoli, a transfer station that fed prisoners to death camps in Poland or to forced labour camps in Austria. As the convoy rolled through the familiar back streets near the ghetto, Efrati and another prisoner grabbed Romolo and dropped him over the tailgate onto the roadway. It was a desperate act of love and hope.
Efrati was sent to Ebensee Labour Camp where survival depended on the ability to withstand hunger, exhaustion, disease and the cruelty of the guards, where life or death depended upon being fit for work. As a boxer, Efrati suffered additional torment. Sadistic guards matched him against taller, heavier prisoners and bet on the outcomes. We don’t know how often he fought, but we do know about his last fight.
Against the odds, Efrati defeated a heavily favoured opponent. In retaliation, angry guards beat and severely injured his brother. Enraged, Efrati attacked the perpetrators, and in the end was beaten to death. Three weeks later, on May 6, 1945, American troops liberated Ebensee, freeing the prisoners. Efrati would have been 30 had he survived.
But love is more powerful than death, and hope is sometimes fulfilled. Efrati’s son Romolo did survive the war. Now in his mid 80s and living in Israel, he has five children and many grandchildren. One of Efrati’s great grandsons hopes some day to start his own boxing club to honour the resilience of his great grandfather and to develop yet another generation of courageous fighters.