How credible do we find his backstory? Imprisoned at Auschwitz (among several other Nazi concentration camps), the Bełchatów native was forced to box other inmates in gruesome death matches for the guards' amusement. Haft is said to have racked up a 76-0 record - which means that 76 of his fellow victims suffered execution as penalty for losing to him. In his early twenties when WWII ended, he fought professionally at light heavy and heavyweight. His record was 12-7 in his scant eleven months fighting for pay before retiring. Rocky Marciano and Roland LaStarza knocked him out back to back (just a few weeks apart) in his last two starts - but that still leaves five less distinguished men that had the beating of him down in his natural division. Doesn't add up to me, winning 76 on the spin against desperate men literally struggling for their very lives - and then losing half a dozen times to unremarkable opponents. I wonder if there's a seed of truth in his story but the numbers or details got fudged a bit. Haft did seem inclined toward fantastical claims as, late in life, it came out that he was pressured into throwing the Marciano fight...
You know, I'm glad you indicated that he was Jewish himself, because, otherwise, he would sound deeply antisemitic, to a fault.
To me the numbers don’t matter. If he had to partake in even one such ‘death match’ for the amusement of evil men, it’s one too many. Horrifying.
Not sure but I find it believable he could beat up 70 something untrained men and have the pro record he did lol.
I live about 10 km from Jaworzno, where the Aushwitz sub-camp was located. From what I know, Haft (Hershel) was under the care of an SS man and was better fed than the others, he didn't work hard, he was in better shape than his rival. Actually, all accounts of these events come from Haft himself, so they are not verified. I know that in other camps, defeat in the ring did not always mean death. Boxers such as Tadeusz Pietrzykowski, Antoni Czortek and several others fought in German camps, suffered some defeats, but survived. Harry Haft recalled that he escaped from the camp and during his escape he killed several civilians and previously a German soldier. He was, among other things, the owner of a brothel and ran several different businesses in his life, before and after his boxing career
