Shapow Nathan - The Boxers Story : Fighting For My Life in the Nazi Camps

F rom time to time, even in the life of a professional writer accustomed to tales of heroism and extraordinary stamina, one comes across a story so powerful and emotive that it forces you to question your own values, makes the world seem a very different place. It has been my great fortune, as a veteran sportswriter, to meet many of the worlds outstanding athletes, to recount the tales of lives devoted to competition, struggle and victory often heroic in their own ways. But Nathan Shapows heroism, for all that it stemmed in some part from athletic prowess and great talent as a boxer, was of a different order.

We hear so often of the Holocaust, and the approximately six million Jews slaughtered by the Nazis, that it is easy to forget they were not some homogeneous mass of victims without names, but individuals. Rabbis, lawyers, writers, artists, scientists, children, atheists and the deeply religious: the Jewish victims of the Holocaust were human beings, as were those who survived. The stories of survivors are always moving, inspirational stories of evading the brutal Nazi genocide that the late Pope John Paul II argued proved the existence of Satan. Amongst them is the story of Nathan Shapow or Nachke to his comrades a Riga-born Jew who fought for his life in the Latvian Ghetto, a series of concentration camps, and went on to fight for the creation of the State of Israel.

It was through my friendship with his son Mike that I was introduced to Nathan, and to the idea of writing his book. I travelled to Los Angeles for an initial discussion and, as politely and discreetly as I could, asked about his experiences in the war. You dont want to know, he would answer. I learned that this had often been his answer, too, to Mike and Adina, his daughter. But slowly, over time, he began to speak of what hed been through, in Latvia, Germany, France and the battle for Israels independence. It is a story of such strength and defiance in the face of overwhelming force and evil that at times, I found it difficult to believe. Nathan faced death time and time again as a prisoner, a warrior, and for the simple reason of his being Jewish and his story was, as the reader will see, one of such fortitude and a stubborn will to live that my journalistic instincts led me to check some of his claims. To my amazement, it transpired that if anything, he had understated the extent of what hed been through and the bravery with which he fought, not just for his own survival, but to protect and save as many of his fellow Jews as he could. No wonder he was known as The Strong One or, in Yiddish, Shtarker. The latter strikes me as by far the better word, as it echoes the English word stark: and Nathans strength, deployed in battle amidst the starkest times of modern history, manifested in stark, dark terms indeed.

I am a sportswriter, not a historian and this is not a work of academic history. It is one mans story, which touched on many other lives, and a story that has yet to end, for Nathan, now in his nineties, still lives in California, in proximity to the Hollywood producers and directors who would surely jump at such a story if it were presented to them as a novel.

However, this is not fiction, but one mans extraordinary story, told from memory, not an attempt to record the whole history of the Holocaust in Latvia and beyond, nor the creation of the State of Israel. It is the story of a family man who lost his mother and two brothers to the cruelties of Nazism and communism, a man who fought back, embodying the famous words of Winston Churchill: Never give up. Never give up. Never, never, never give up. His persistence and courage were the traits of a true hero, but, for all the tragedy he lived through, not a tragic one: his marriage, children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren attest to his triumph, and it is my great privilege to have been granted access to his life story, with all its twists and turns.

Nathan Shapow said nothing of the story in these pages till late in a long, ongoing life: although I did not, for a long time, think myself to be the appropriate author of such a work, it has been an honour and a life-changing experience to hear and help him tell his story. It is an epic of survival, and gentile that I am, an epic that has helped me understand why Israel fights, continually, to preserve the achievements of Nathan and his comrades, the men and women who walked from the gates of Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz, traumatised and wounded, and went on to fight, securing their own nation-state.

There will, no doubt, be errors and mistakes, most of them mine, within this book, but I have no doubt that the story of Nathan Shapow, The Strong One, is a true and truly remarkable odyssey.

BobHarris, 2012