BOOK REVIEW

The Boxer’s Story: Fighting For My Life In The Nazi Camps by Nathan Shapow with Bob Harris (Sportsbook ofthemonth.com price: £9.99 PBK)

FIRST published in hardback in 2013, Nathan Shapow’s The Boxer’s Story: coauthored by sportswriter Bob Harris, is now available in paperback.

The press release accompanying the book calls it “an extraordinary and powerful true story that reads like a thriller. It will deeply affect everyone who reads it.” Ordinarily, such releases can be ignored; not this one.

Born in Riga, Latvia in 1921, Shapow was a pre-war boxing champion, but his sporting ambitions were put on hold once the Nazis captured his home town in July 1941. At the time, around 40,000 Jews lived in the city, but through the summer of 1941 an estimated 11,000 were murdered. In November the same year, Shapow was part of a group of strong, younger men shipped to a forced labour camp.

Extremely fit following years of physical training as a boxer and swimmer, Shapow drew the attention of the camp’s first lieutenant, Obersturmfuhrer Hoffman, who singled him out for special torture. Assuming he was likely to be shot at any time, Shapow attacked and subsequently murdered Hoffman, a crime he kept secret for six decades.

The next time a sportsman or woman mentions being under extreme pressure, consider what the author was compelled to do under his watchful captors’ eyes. He was forced to box for his life against sturdy German opponents on three separate occasions, encounters from which he emerged victorious thanks to years of training, running, speed work and a sheer bloody-minded spirit : characteristics that saved him from certain death.

The book focuses primarily upon the role that physical training played in Shapow’s survival, but it also reveals the efforts by various Jewish groups to build underground bunkers, acquire arms and establish contact with Red Army partisans.

Following the ‘liquidation’ of Riga’s Jewish Ghetto in November 1943, Shapow was transferred to other Nazi concentration camps including Kaiserwald, Spilve, and Stutthof. He was liberated by the US Army in April 1945 following the surrender of the Nazis at the slave labour camp at Magdeburg.

After the war he went to Palestine, where he fought for the creation of Israel, moving to California with his wife and family in 1960.

We’ve teamed up with www. sportsbookofthemonth.com and have a copy of The Boxer’s Story to give away. To win, visit www.sportsbook ofthemonth.com and answer this question: In which year was the state of Israel formally established?

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