Johann Trollmann and Romani Resistance to the Nazis by Jud Nirenberg

Johann Trollmann broke with the traditional German boxing style in the 1930s.Īlmost immediately after Adolf Hitler's inauguration as chancellor on January 30, 1933, many sports organizations enthusiastically joined the process of arianization of society that fueled the Nazi regime. The curious thing was that Nazism provided him with involuntary help to take the last step towards that chance.

Īn extremely intense career that included 52 fights in just over three and a half years placed him at the gates of the German light heavyweight championship, in times when globalization was not even a dream and national titles were worth much more than today. This style earned him admiration, but also criticism from those who contemptuously called him 'gypsy dancer'. Very soon his name became known for his way of fighting: fast, agile and owner of A very good technique and mobility on the ring was the other side of traditional German boxing, which consisted of standing up to hit and receive without quarter. As an amateur, he won four regional championships and one northern German championship before turning 20.Īfter being excluded from the Teutonic Olympic team that would participate in the 1928 Amsterdam Games, he moved to Berlin and began his professional career in October 1929. Together with his parents and his eight brothers, he grew up in the old town of the state capital of Lower Saxony, in a modest house located on Tiefenthal street, which today is called Johann Trollmann.Īt just eight years old and during the First World War, Rukeli ( Young Tree, in the Roma language) began to practice boxing, a sport that was then prohibited and would only be legalized after the fall of the Empire and the establishment of the Weimar Republic in 1918. The persecution and stigmatization of gypsies had been steeping in western Europe for several centuries when Trollmann was born on Decemin Wilsche, a small town located 60 kilometers west of Hanover, one of the industrial poles of the old German Empire, where he moved as a child.

One of those victims was Johann Wilhelm Trollmann, a German light heavyweight champion, who was stripped of his title and license, locked up and killed in a concentration camp. After the Jewish people, it was the most punished group in those years. Although there is no consolidated record, it is estimated that at least 250,000 people of this ethnic group died in the gas chambers and tens of thousands were shot in the territories occupied by patrols of the Schutzstaffel (SS). Porajmos ( devotion ) and Samudaripenes (great massacre) are the terms used to define the genocide of the Roma population in Europe during the Nazi regime.

Johann Trollmann and Romani Resistance to the Nazis by Jud Nirenberg