Date: January 23, 2025
Author: Robert Sharenow
Genre: young adult YA, historical fiction
I was first attracted to this book by the bold gold emblem on the book jacket. The emblem signifies the Sidney Taylor award winner, Association of Jewish Libraries. I gleaned from the book cover that this would be about boxing, as well. I do enjoy the occasional boxing movie but never read a boxing novel before. May I just say that I am so glad that I finally did! It had me hooked from the first sentence all the way through the last gripping comic strip and beyond.
I love WWII novels and this gave a unique look at the horrors that played out as the Nazis gained in power and the Jews were openly and increasingly tortured by the antisemitic population, known as the Aryan race of Germany. Scary times indeed.
Imagine, being a known Jew in a Berlin public school in the mid 1930’s. Now imagine the student body was mostly made of Aryan children. The entire school was called into the auditorium to be informed of new laws that were being put into affect immediately, effectively expelling all Jewish children and kicking them off property. How terrifying to have been in that auditorium hearing those words and then running for their lives from the whole swarm of angry students that have just been given full right to inflict any and all injury on these poor Jewish children. The worse the beating the better was the attitude. And if one of these Jewish children happened to die during the beating? It would have been met with a sickly victory cry, I’m sure.
I loved this literary journey Mr. Sharenow brought me down as young Karl trained his way up the ranks in the boxing world during a time when everything was changing for him in his life.
Karl had mentioned that he was both blessed and cursed with his looks that favored the portion of Aryan blood that ran through his veins. It was convenient for blending in when going places, but made his beatings even worse if/when the kids discovered he was truly Jewish.
This is where Karl’s boxing career sprang from. His father knew the world-famous boxer, Max Schmeling. When Max saw how badly Karl had been beaten by the swarm that day at the school, he made special arrangements to begin training Karl to box.
After reading this I wondered if the story was based on real life events. Mr. Sharenow explained in the authors note that this story was indeed based (though loosely) on the life of world heavyweight champion, Max Schmeling. Mr. Schmeling was beloved to the Nazi party until his loss to Joe Louis. Mrs. Schmeling was reported to have been terrified for Max to return to Germany after this loss. Scared and rightfully so, that the Reich would imprison her husband upon his return for shaming himself and Adolf Hitler with a loss to a negro man. How very un-Nazi-like.