This guy is mainly known for pulling down the final curtain on Mickey Walker's hectic career, but his story is interesting in its own right. He was the German middleweight and light heavyweight champion when Hitler came to power, and he happened to be a jew. The day before he was due to defend his middleweight title in Berlin, he received death threats from Nazi thugs demanding that he not enter the ring the following day. Instead he fled to France, and continued to meet contenders in Paris, Brussels and London. As the Nazi war machine advanced, he fled to the United States via Cuba, where he again set himself up as a contender. He lost twice to Marcel Thil, but went on to defeat Ken Overlin, and draw against Teddy Yarosz. Anyhow I think that he is perhaps worthy of a thread!
http://juedische-sportstars.de/index.php?id=198&L=2 'In the beginning of the 1930s, Erich, aka Ete, Seelig was at the start of a great boxing career. Within a year and a half, he secured both the German middleweight and light heavyweight championship titles. Seelig was originally born in Pommerania, but shortly after World War I, him and his family moved to Berlin. In the big city, his brothers brought him along when they went boxing. In a short amount of time, Ete became the newest rising star for the newly founded boxing division of Tennis Borussia Berlin. When he was 14 years old, the club newspaper began celebrating his athleticism: “He is quick, unlike any other German boxer in his [weight] class before him.” Together with his Borussia teammates known by their club nickname “the Violets” – young Seelig won the Berlin-Brandenburg championship three consecutive times in 1929, 1930, and 1931. At the age of 19, he qualified for the final round of the German championship in 1929, in which he barely lost. Seelig felt confident to further his career, and in the beginning of 1931 – he became a professional. Even at that level he continued forward with his picture perfect career: in November of 1931, following eight consecutive victories, he went on to win the German middleweight championship in a match against Herbert Seifried at the Berliner Circus Busch. Fourteen months later, he stepped into the ring with Helmut Hartkopp who outweighed him by six kilograms, and clinched the German middleweight championship. In the beginning of March 1933, sports news outlets celebrated Seelig as “Germany’s youngest champion” and attested to his “master performance”.'
