Salamo Arouch

Salamo Arouch was a Greek-Israeli boxer and Holocaust survivor. The Middleweight Champion of Greece in 1938 and the All-Balkans Middleweight Champion in 1939, his career was cut short due to the outbreak of World War II in the following year. During the Axis occupation of Greece, Arouch, along with his entire family, was deported to German-occupied Poland, where he was interned at the Auschwitz concentration camp. There, he survived the Holocaust by being made to engage in makeshift boxing with his fellow prisoners for the entertainment of German military officers. His story was the subject of the 1989 film Triumph of the Spirit, in which he was portrayed by the American actor Willem Dafoe.