The men at the club cheered and kept refilling their beer mugs. I hadn’t eaten since dinner, and the alcohol made my whole body feel numb while whirling scenes of the fight danced in my mind. Hellmis’s words melted into distinct images, and I saw Max in his purple trunks looming over Louis with greater and greater authority and menace. The men around me laughed, cheered, and slapped one another on the back with every punch Max landed. The two fighters battled it out for eight more rounds, inflicting terrible damage on each other. Max’s left eye was completely shut, his lip split, and streaks of his own blood had to be toweled off his face between each round. Yet his energy didn’t flag; the momentum of the opportunity to upset Louis and get his shot at the title carried him forward.
Louis became dazed and tired and either from desperation or exhaustion delivered a low blow that brought on howls of outrage from Hellmis.
“Louis knows he is finished, so he is resorting to dirty tactics to stay alive. He is showing that the true colors of the Negro are brown and the yellow of a coward!”
Finally, in the twelfth round, Max delivered another solid combination of punches that sent Louis down, first to his knees and then to the canvas.
“He’s down again!” Hellmis screamed. “He’s down! Louis is down! He’s finished! Aus! Aus! Aus! Aus! Aus! Aus! Aus! Max has done it! He’s defeated Joe Louis!”
The roomful of men leaped to their feet and cheered, wildly dancing, hugging, and chugging down their mugs of beer. I hugged Neblig, who lifted me up and screamed without a stutter. “He did it!”
Everyone spontaneously started clapping and marching out of the club and into the streets, chanting, “Schmeling! Schmeling! Schmeling! Schmeling!” Throngs of others poured into the streets to celebrate. We all swept into a nearby beer hall, where hundreds of people were celebrating, raising their glasses and singing. The room seemed to sway and throb with joyous revelers.
I settled myself on a long bench between Johann and Neblig, and they took turns refilling my beer mug. My vision blurred even more, and I slurred my words as I spoke, causing those seated around me to laugh and try to get me even more drunk. Every time my mug was empty, someone refilled it and proposed a toast to Max, insisting that we down our entire mugs in his honor. I happily obliged, and the beer slid down my throat with increasing ease. I sang and clapped along with the beer-hall sing-alongs and got swept up in the joy of the moment.
After an hour of steady drinking, I had to get up and relieve myself. I pushed myself up from the table, and my legs felt rubbery as I staggered into the men’s room. A long troughlike urinal lined one wall. I undid my pants and had started to go when another drunken reveler came in and stood beside me to do the same.
“What a fight, huh?” he said.
“Ja.” I agreed.
“He really taught that Negro a lesson, I’ll tell you.”
“He sure did. Ja. He did.”
“Too bad he can’t fight a Gypsy next, or, even better, a Jew! It’d be fun to see Max take down all the mongrel races one at a time. Wouldn’t it?”
My mind froze, and I suddenly realized that I was holding my circumcised penis out in full view for the first time. My stomach lurched as if the man’s words had been a hard, quick punch to my gut. I quickly attempted to tuck myself back into my pants, fumbling with the buttons. Before I could finish buckling up, my stomach violently lurched again, and I vomited into the urinal.
“Scheisse!” the man said, jumping back to avoid the splatter.
I steadied myself by placing a hand against the wall. But then I heaved and threw up again, emptying myself onto the front of my shirt and the floor this time.
“You okay, buddy?” the man said, stepping back away from me.
“Yeah,” I mumbled. “I’m fine.”
I took one small step away from the wall. My mind re-focused enough to realize that I wasn’t certain if I had pulled into my pants in time. I patted down the front of myself and discovered that my pants were only half unbuttoned, but I had managed to tuck myself inside. My hand came away wet, and I realized that I had urinated on myself. Then I felt my legs collapse beneath me and my body falling. The walls of the bathroom and the urinal turned sideways in my vision. And everything went black.
When my eyes finally fluttered open, I had no idea where I was. I vaguely remembered passing out and was relieved to discover that I was not still on the floor of the men’s room of the beer hall. As my eyes adjusted, I realized I was lying on a cot in the locker room of the Berlin Boxing Club.
Neblig entered the room, carrying some of the folding chairs, which he stacked against the far wall.
“Guten Morgen, Herr S-s-s-s-stern!” he said sarcastically.
I tried to sit up, but my head felt like it was made of lead and dropped back onto the canvas of the cot. My stomach rolled. A sour taste filled my throat, nose, and mouth.
“What time is it?” I said.
“Around ten.”
I saw my dirty clothing lying in a heap beside the cot, including my underwear. I quickly ran my hands over my body and realized I was naked under the blanket that covered me.
“Did you bring me back here?”
“Ja. You were in n-n-n-no condition to walk.”
“Did you—um—how did I get changed and onto this cot?”
“I did it just like your m-m-m-mama.” He laughed. “But I didn’t sing you a lullaby. And no k-k-k-kiss good night either.”
He saw me staring at my pile of clothes.
“You w-w-w-were all covered in vomit, and you had p-p-p-p-pissed on yourself. Not your best moment.”
I wanted to know if he had noticed my circumcised penis. If so, he gave no indication. He continued to arrange the folding chairs against the wall where they were kept for storage. Then he tossed me an old sweatshirt and warm-up pants from his locker.
“Here. They’ll be b-b-b-big on you, but at least you won’t smell like a beer-hall bathroom w-w-w-when you go home.”
He walked back out of the room, and I quickly slipped on the pants, relieved to have my secret safely hidden again.
The Real Max
ALL OF GERMANY GOT SWEPT UP IN MAX MANIA. HE flew home in grand style on the Hindenburg, the largest airship in the world and the pride of the Nazi fleet. Thousands turned up to greet him when he landed in Frankfurt, and the event was covered on live radio. Every newspaper and magazine featured photographs of Max and stories about the fight. Almost instantly Max’s name and face appeared on products all over Europe as he endorsed everything from his favorite brand of almonds to shirt collars to motor oil. Max also acquired the rights to distribute the film of the Louis fight in Germany, and it quickly became the number one box office hit across the country under the title Max Schmeling’s Victory—A German Victory.
The first fan to view the movie was Hitler himself. Max sat directly beside the Führer as he watched the entire film and happily cheered every punch. All of the Nazi high command now vied to get close to Max, and he appeared to be happy to oblige them. The gossip pages of the newspapers ran endless photographs and articles about Anny and Max dining with Hitler or Goebbels and his wife, as if they were all the best of friends.
The Nazi press took every opportunity to position Max’s victory as proof of Aryan superiority. German sportswriters and cartoonists depicted Louis as a coward or a savage and Max as a great and honorable Teutonic warrior. Max even wrote the introduction to a book called Germans Fight for Honor, Not Money: Boxing as a Race Problem by a man named Ludwig Haymann. I found a copy of the book in the locker room at the Berlin Boxing Club. I flipped open the book and read a random passage:
Cowardly by nature, Jews tend to avoid becoming boxers themselves and infest the ranks of managers and promoters. These positions allow them to utilize their natural skills as business cheats and fixers.
This statement outraged me even more than the typical Nazi propaganda. Any true fight fan knew that the ranks of professional fighters were filled with Jews. The autho
r argued that true Germans fistfought for honor while Jews and other mongrel races prizefought for money. Max’s introduction to the book was a perfunctory greeting, praising Haymann and encouraging German boys to pursue boxing. Max’s words didn’t carry any overt references to Haymann’s anti-Semitic theories, but by introducing the book, he was clearly giving his endorsement to those views. I became so absorbed in the text, I neglected to hear Johann enter and start to suit up next to me.
“You can borrow that if you like,” he said, making me jump with a start.
“Huh?” I said, quickly closing the book and putting it aside.
“The book,” he said. “It’s mine, but you can borrow it.”
I was surprised that the book belonged to Johann. I hadn’t known he was a Nazi. My first instinct was to refuse his offer to borrow the book. Yet I worried that he might suspect something of me if I indicated that I was not interested.
“Sure,” I said, casually picking up the book again.
“But let me warn you, it’s a total waste of time,” Johann said. “I thought it was going to be a strategy book about how to win in the ring. But it’s really just a bunch of Nazi propaganda. The only help that book would be in a fight is if the ref let me hit my opponent with it.”
He laughed and exited the locker room. I was relieved to know that Johann had not become a Nazi. But the book raised more uncomfortable questions about Max. I tucked the book back into my bag and read the entire text that night, each sentence making me more angry and determined to one day prove that a German Jew could be a boxing champion. The book also left me even more confused about Max and his true alliances.
Max was so caught up in his new celebrity and the demands for his time that he didn’t have time to train at the Berlin Boxing Club anymore. I was left to wonder if he was a completely different person from the man I had come to know. Perhaps all the attention from Hitler and Goebbels had transformed him into a full-blown Nazi. Could this be the same Max who was friends with my father? Who posed for paintings by banned avant-garde artists? Whose American manager was a Jew? Who had once claimed that there were no differences between men in the ring?
Who was the real Max? I feared what would happen if and when he returned to the club. Would he refuse to train me because he knew I was a Jew? Would he publicly denounce me and make me leave the club? Or perhaps he never would come back. Maybe he had moved beyond all of us.
That summer Germany hosted the Olympic Games in Berlin. In the weeks leading up to the event, the government made a concerted effort to clean up the city and hide all evidence of the regime’s anti-Semitism. Acts of violence against Jews declined, and anti-Jewish propaganda posters were taken down and replaced by posters advertising the Olympics. Restaurants and hotels removed their signs that read no jews allowed. So when the community of inter-national journalists arrived to cover the games, they saw little outward evidence of what really was going on.
Meanwhile every day the newspapers seemed to run yet another photograph of Max being wined and dined by a high-ranking Nazi. In my mind Max and the city of Berlin were moving in opposite directions. While the entire country seemed to be whitewashing its racist and anti-Semitic ways, Max was revealing his true embrace of Nazism.
During the games, Max had to share the spotlight in the Berlin sports pages with the stars of Germany’s Olympic team, gymnasts Alfred Schwarzmann and Konrad Frey, who each won three gold medals, and track star Luz Long. Long won a silver medal in the long jump, but he became most well known for helping his American rival Jesse Owens, a wiry Negro runner from Alabama. After Owens foot-fouled in his first two jumps, Long advised him to aim to begin his jump a few inches sooner. The advice worked, and Owens took the gold medal in the event.
Hitler had hoped to use the Olympics—like the Louis-Schmeling fight—as proof of Aryan supremacy. Jesse Owens foiled those plans, taking four gold medals, in the long jump, the 100 meters, the 200 meters, and the 4x100 meter relay team. Hitler refused to shake Owens’s hand after his victories and left the stadium before the medal ceremonies each time he won. Yet even the German sportswriters had to write admiringly of the Negro’s accomplishments, and he was embraced as a celebrity wherever he went, with fans crowding him for autographs and pictures.
Owens’s performance further galvanized my obsession with the United States. The German Olympic team had been purged of nearly anyone of non-Aryan background. On the other hand, the multiethnic U.S. team even included several Jewish athletes.
The day before the games ended, a thick envelope arrived at the gallery addressed to my father with Max’s name and return address. I took the delivery but couldn’t fathom what Max might’ve sent my father. I stood by while my father opened the envelope to reveal two tickets to the Olympics and a note.
“Dear Sig”—he read the note aloud to himself—“I thought you and Karl might enjoy catching the last day of competition and the closing ceremonies. These are good seats, so cheer loud for Deutschland. Best regards, Max.”
My heart started racing. As much as I had divided feelings about whom to root for, I was dying to go to the Olympics. Max was instantly back in my good graces. Yet my father frowned at the note and the tickets in his hand.
“Tickets. Great,” he said sarcastically. “This is just what we need.”
He stared at the tickets, and then a small smile crossed his lips.
He went to the phone and had the operator connect him to a number in Berlin.
“Guten Tag, Herr Rolf, it’s Sig Stern calling. [Pause.] Yes, it has been a long time. Listen, I just happened to come into possession of two prime tickets for the Olympic Games for tomorrow, and I thought you would want them. [Pause.] Yes. The seats are fantastic. [Pause.] Well, I had to pay double face value for them, so if you could go, I don’t know, maybe twenty percent over that just to cover my costs, we could make a deal. [Pause.] Wunderbar! I’ll have my son, Karl, drop them by at once.”
I tightened my fists as I watched my father stuff the tickets, my tickets, into an envelope and scribble an address on the front. I couldn’t believe he had just taken my tickets and sold them without a thought. Didn’t he have any idea how much the Olympics meant to me? To everybody?
“Bring these over to Herr Rolf, and make sure you get the cash up front.”
He handed the envelope toward me, but I refused to take it.
“Those tickets were for me—”
My father’s face darkened.
“What?”
“Max said in his note that—”
“Perhaps you like the taste of paper better than bread?” he snapped. “It’s all well and good for you to play your boxing games and scribble cartoons instead of trying to find more jobs to do. But we need money to eat, to live, far more than you need to go watch a bunch of men in shorts run around a track. Do you understand, Karl?”
I didn’t respond.
“Do you understand?” he said, raising his voice and leaning his face close to mine.
“Yes, sir,” I mumbled.
“Good,” he said. “Now go.”
He thrust the envelope into my hands and turned back to his desk.
For a minute I considered defying my father and going to the games with Neblig. Yet my intense desire to see the games gave way to a sinking feeling of desperation. We were living in an embarrassing state, stuffed into one room separated by bed sheets. Our meals were getting leaner and leaner. I knew my father was right. We could not eat the tickets for dinner. I swallowed my disappointment and delivered the tickets to Herr Rolf.
Good-bye, Winzig
THE WEEK AFTER THE CLOSING CEREMONIES, THE restaurants and businesses around our neighborhood rehung the signs reading we don’t serve jews in their windows, and Der Stürmer and other Nazi tabloids and magazines returned to the newsstands.
Despite my dedication to my training, I still found time to draw in my journal nearly every day, working on my cartoons and caricatures. Typically I drew late at night after I finished a
ll of my chores, schoolwork, and deliveries, working by candlelight until I got too tired to hold my pen steady. One day I returned to Herr Greenberg’s art supply store because I had run out of black ink. I hadn’t been back to the store in several months, and I was shocked by the transformation. The once overstuffed shelves were now more than half empty, with just a few pads, pens, and paintbrushes scattered around, with large dusty spaces where other products used to be.
Herr Greenberg sat behind the counter, reading a book in Hebrew, looking slouched and defeated. A basket of small green apples stood beside the front counter along with a wooden bowl of brown eggs. Whereas in the past he would jump up to greet every customer, now he didn’t even seem to notice as I walked in and approached.
“Herr Greenberg?” I said.
He finally glanced up from his book, and his eyes looked vacant and glazed over. When he saw that it was me, his face brightened, and he slowly rose from his chair.
“Guten Morgen, Karl. So good to see you,” he said, shaking my hand. “It’s been a while. How are your mother and father?”
“Fine,” I said, noticing that his hand felt cold and frail.
“That’s good. Please give them my regards.”
“Of course,” I said.
“Are you keeping up with your drawing?”
“Yes.”
“You still want to draw the cartoons, ja?”
“I’m trying,” I said.
“Good. The world could use more funny pictures. Now what can I do for you?”
“I just need some black ink.”
“I think you’re in luck. Black ink is one of the few things I still carry.”
He came from behind the counter and moved to a nearby shelf. Typically he always had a small army of ink bottles of different sizes and colors lined up in tight rows like chess pieces. Now there were just two small bottles.
The Berlin Boxing Club Page 17
