IN 1944, aged just 16, Harry Haft was forced into a concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland.
To survive the Holocaust, the teenager was told to, literally, fight for his life.
For the ‘entertainment’ of German SS officers, emaciated Jewish inmates were put together in a ring for bare-knuckle boxing contests – fought to the death – in front of jeering troops.
The winner would get an extra slop of food, to keep them fit for their next fight.
The loser, should he survive, would be deemed unfit to work as a slave labourer and shot on the spot, or taken to a gas chamber or crematorium.
Haft, who boasted a strong physical stature, was recruited by an SS overseer called Schneider who taught him how to be a boxer.
He fought for his life in 76 bare-knuckle death matches at a camp in Jaworzno, which was situated at a coal mine north of Auschwitz, and miraculously won every single one.
Haft’s escape from the Nazis near the end of the war was also remarkable. In 1945, his Jaworzno camp was dissolved as the Soviet Red Army marched into German held-territory.
Thousands of inmates were transferred to other camps, which gave some the opportunity to flee. Haft was one of those fortunate enough to get away.
On the run, he would encounter a bathing German soldier who he would kill before stealing his uniform and wearing it as a disguise.
Once he found refuge in a Displaced Person’s Camp operated by the US Army in Munich, he had the opportunity to win an amateur championship organised by the US armed forces.
That was the catalyst for Haft to launch a professional boxing career that culminated in a bout with future heavyweight world champion, Rocky Marciano in 1949.
Haft, who died of cancer in 2007 aged 82, was the subject of Hollywood movie The Survivor – directed by Oscar-winning filmmaker Barry Levinson.
SunSport spoke with Harry’s son Alan, who revealed the horror effects of the trauma and PTSD his father suffered.
“My father was a fairly violent person,” he told SunSport.
“PTSD wasn’t diagnosed in that era, and what he went through led to struggles in later life with his mental health.
“He had nightmares all the time, he flew into rages and broke every window in our family home.
“I remember he once saw a swastika in a history book and went out to hide in the local park. We had to go out to search for him.
“I’m a second generation Holocaust survivor and because of my father’s PTSD, my childhood was tough.
“He sort of ruined every holiday, exploding into a rage, and I lost count of the number of suicide attempts he made.”
After finding his way to the Displaced Persons Camp following the end of the war, Harry put his boxing skills to good use in 1947 to win the Amateur Jewish Heavyweight Championship in an event set up to entertain US troops in Munich.
A year later, he emigrated to New Jersey, where he vowed to become a prize fighter.
Alan recalled: “My father told his aunt and uncle he wanted to be a prize fighter, and she asked him, ‘Why would you want to be a boxer? Haven’t you undergone enough punishment?’
“He replied, ‘After all I’ve been through, what harm can a man with boxing gloves on his hands do to me?’
“When my father died I put that quote on his gravestone.”
Haft’s fight record was 13 wins from 21 fights, which culminated in that 1949 bout with Rocky Marciano, who would go on to become one of the greatest heavyweights of all time.
But Alan told how Harry was paid a visit by American mobsters who wanted to fix the fight.
“He said two gangsters came into his dressing room before the fight and told him, ‘You’re going down in the first’,” Alan revealed.
“So my father said to them, ‘Well, I’ve never gone down in the first round for anybody. You don’t scare me. The Germans didn’t scare me’.”
Haft would suffer a third round knockout, but there was a bigger plan in play.
Underpinning Haft’s tale of survival was a story of love.
He was separated from his childhood sweetheart, Leah Pablanski when the German army took their city Belchatow in 1944.
By fighting Marciano, some five years later, harry hoped to get his name in the newspapers so that, if Leah was still alive, she would come and find him.
The years passed by and Harry married, had children, and set up his own fruit and veg store in Brooklyn.
However, as incredible as it seemed, Haft was destined to meet Leah one final time.
In 1963, he received a call from the Belchatow survivors’ association saying his former girlfriend was living in Miami under the married surname Lieberman.
Haft took his family to Florida, where he asked Alan to call every Lieberman in the phone book at their hotel.
Alan, who was 14 at the time, remembered: “I finally spoke with a man who said, ‘That’s my wife’ over the phone.
“My dad immediately interjected, ‘Tell her that Harry Haft from Belchatow wants to see her.’
“The man was reluctant and said she wasn’t seeing anyone.
“So I told him, ‘Okay, if she changes her mind we’re at the Marseille Hotel.’
“About 10 minutes later the phone in the room rings and it’s the husband. He said: ‘She doesn’t want to see anybody, but you she wants to see.”
Harry and Alan drove to Coral Gables where they met Leah. But the Leah he met was different to the one he knew when they were teenagers.
“She was dying of cervical cancer, she was so skinny, she looked like a Holocaust victim,” Alan said.
“I watched them go out in the garden for a little while and exchange some final words together.
“It was the only time I ever saw my father cry.”
In 2006, Alan told his father’s story in a book called Harry Haft: Survivor of Auschwitz, Challenger of Rocky Marciano.
He couldn’t find a publisher to touch it, because the material was so dark.
Eventually, it was published by Syracuse University – but there was little academic value in the book, which sold just 4,000 copies.
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However, it gained a new lease of life in, of all places, Germany — where it was republished.
Cartoonist Reinhard Kleist bought a copy and was inspired to create a graphic novel of Haft’s life story.
It was called The Boxer and would go on to win countless awards.
It was then published around the world, and thrust Haft’s story into the mainstream.
This would encourage writer Justine Juel Gillmer to pen a script that would end up on the Black List, an annual survey of the most-liked motion picture screenplays not yet produced.
There, it caught the attention of Barry Levinson, who won the Academy Award for Rain Main and was compelled to make the movie.
Starring X-Men: The Last Stand actor Ben Foster in the lead role alongside Hollywood legend Danny DeVito, The Survivor was critically acclaimed.
