6
He came into the ring, his hair dyed blond, his body covered with white powder. Who was this outrageous boxer? Was he trying to mock the world of boxing? Was he mocking the Aryan ideal of a blond warrior? The Nazis in the audience jeered and laughed. Was this man supposed to be a worthy contender for a title? He was a clown, better suited to the circus than to the boxing ring. That’s what the Nazi sports establishment thought. Later they simply regarded him as a mongrel, worthy of no more than sterilization or extermination.
He was Johann Trollmann, a young boxer who would be derogatorily known as the “Gypsy in the Ring.” His family called him Rukeli, but schoolmasters gave him the name Johann for it was a Germanic name, and if the boy wanted to attend school with German youth he would have to assimilate into German culture. Nevertheless, he was derided as a Zigeuner (Gypsy). Zigeuner derives from Greek and means untouchable. Gypsies were considered untouchable due to their alleged criminality, lack of national loyalty, unhygienic way of living, and non-adherence to civilized standards of morality.
Trollmann was born in a bar on December 27, 1907, near Hannover, Germany. He was one of nine children in a Sinti family, all of whom lived in an apartment without running water and plagued by mice and insects. The family shared outhouses with numerous other families. Each outhouse toilet had a hole in the ground bordered by wooden planks. All of the family’s food was cooked in one large ceramic pot. To support themselves, the Trollmann family did manual work on farms: harvesting crops, planting seeds, caring for animals, shoveling manure out of barn stalls, doing minor carpentry repairs, and so forth. They moved from farm to farm, often in caravans.
As a member of a class stereotyped as deracinated, untrustworthy Gypsies, the Trollmanns were thought to be prone to low-level crimes and minor cons. In folk tales, Gypsies were often presented as kidnappers who would either demand money for the release of captive children, sell the children to circuses or farm owners, or put them to work as slave laborers. While many people use the word “Gypsy” to refer to vagabonds or other unsettled groups of people, the word is considered pejorative by those to whom it is applied. The more accurate term would be either “Sinti” or “Roma.” The Sinti migrated to Germany from India in the late fifteenth century and spoke a language that was part German and part Romani. They settled in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. There were offshoots in France and northern Italy. From the times of their various arrivals, restrictions were imposed on them. In many cases, governments encouraged them to leave. Nobody wanted them. The Sinti were the largest of the so-called Gypsy groups in Germany. As a male Sinti, Trollmann was known as a Sinto. In Austria, the largest Gypsy group was the Roma.
Author Sybil Milton writes,
Although the Sinti and Roma minority in Germany and Austria represented less than one percent of the general population—a maximum of 35,000 in Germany and a maximum of 11,000 in Austria, they were stigmatized by the Nazi government and majority society as nomadic, socially marginal, economically unproductive, sexually licentious, criminally “inclined,” and racially inferior… . [The Nazis] defined Sinti and Roma as social outsiders, thereby facilitating their persecution by health, welfare, and police bureaucracies, and finally, providing the rationale for their exclusion, concentration, and annihilation.1
As a member of this marginalized and distrusted minority, Johann Rukeli Trollmann was treated as an alien, a non-citizen who should not be permitted in Germanic society. He looked different than the other kids in his class. He was swarthy and had long, dark, curly hair. Children can be cruel to those who are different from their own perceived view of normality. And far as Trollmann’s classmates were concerned, he deserved to be ostracized, bullied, and held in contempt. He was not a submissive boy and so would not tolerate being the target of abuse. His illiterate father decided that Rukeli should learn the manly art of self-defense. At the age of eight, he was sent, along with a friend who was already taking boxing lessons, to the Schaufelder Street Sports Center to learn how to box.
Jud Nirenberg writes in his biography of Trollmann,
Rukeli was eight years old when he visited a boxing hall for the first time. A friend brought him to look around the local school’s sports hall, where the friend had been training for a few weeks. Boxing was illegal, partly because many saw it as a foreign import, something English. And England, so few years after the Great War, was no friend. The few who boxed in Germany were the well traveled; sailors, traders, soldiers who had picked it up as prisoners of war. For a boy like Rukeli, there was something glamorous in it. It was illegal and associated with rough types but here it was, this enticing, forbidden fruit and a chance to prove who was toughest.2
After minimal training, Trollmann entered the ring to box an older boy who had been training at the gym long before Trollmann entered it. Trollmann, as expected, lost his first fight against that older boy and suffered a bloody nose. While many boys would have called it quits at that point, Trollmann was smitten. He loved boxing. It made him feel as if he could be in control of his life. And he soon began displaying some of his natural talent: his fists would fly with a rapidity and accuracy that impressed all those he faced. In addition, he was able to use his fast footwork to evade the punches of his opponents, then quickly darting in close to deliver a series of devastating combinations of blows. By the time he was nine, he had won three fights. The other boys at the gym, none of whom were Sinti, initially smirked at the skinny little swarthy kid who thought he could box. Now, whenever he walloped an opponent, they cheered him on, patting him on the back as he left the ring. No longer did Trollmann feel like an outcast.
By 1925 he had acquired a trainer named Karl Leyendecker, a fighter pilot in World War I who had been wounded and who had the gravitas and mien of a proud warrior. The boys in the gym idolized him and faithfully enacted his every instruction. His hours-long training sessions were rigorous but his students never complained. The few who considered the training too onerous just quietly left the gym. Not Trollmann.
Nirenberg writes that Leyendecker
noticed Johann Trollmann right away and kept a careful eye on him during sparring. When Rukeli had a fight, the trainer liked to go along to stay in his corner, and to carry his spit bucket. He chastised Rukeli at times, especially for not keeping his fists up where they could best protect his face yet there was no missing the student’s discipline, his willingness to do as instructed or his raw talent.3
Leyendecker, who was not a by-the-book pedagogue, never stood in the way of Trollmann developing his own style, and it was a unique one. It was a style of bobbing and weaving, of fast footwork, of darting in and darting out that would distinguish such later pugilists as Sugar Ray Robinson and Muhammad Ali. In Germany during the Nazi era, boxers were supposed to stand their ground as if glued in place and trade punches with their opponent. They were like pugilistic automatons though they did not have to goose-step into the ring.
By age eighteen, Trollmann had become a local district champ and was earning more money than his father. Soon thereafter, Trollmann joined the boxing section of the Hannover Workers Sports Club that was run by socialists and communists, who had no prejudice against Jewish and Sinti boxers. They were such ardent anti-nationalists that they refused to sing the German national anthem and disdained the awarding and wearing of medals that indicated superiority in a sport. They believed that sports were for everyone to enjoy. While there, Trollmann proved himself to be one of the most clever and adept amateur boxers in Germany.
He decided that his amateur days should be put behind him. He could earn a lot more money and fame if he turned professional. In 1929 he signed a contract to be managed by Ernst Zirzow of Berlin, a clever ring promoter and savvy negotiator. In addition, Trollmann agreed to be trained by the finest boxer in Germany, Erich Seelig, a Jew, who at various times was the middleweight and light heavyweight champion and who later was forced to leave Germany with the barrel of a Gestapo Luger pressed against his forehead. Zirzow signed Trollmann up for one fight after another, often as frequently as one a month. From 1929 through 1932, fans could watch Trollmann take on and defeat the best regional boxers in Germany.
In 1928 he thought he was good enough to participate in the Amsterdam Summer Olympics, but as a Sinti who danced around the ring, he was not seen as a real German who boxed in a traditional German style. Trollmann was deeply disappointed by his country’s rejection of him but thought he could make up for the snub by defeating any boxer willing to enter the ring and face him. He would prove himself to all of Germany just as he had proven himself as a young boy in the boxing gym. Though the German Olympic Committee never spoke of its mistake in not permitting Trollmann to represent Germany, members of the committee often came to watch him fight. They watched as he won bout after bout, and Trollmann made a point of beating those who had represented his country at the Olympics. It wasn’t only the usual boxing fans who came to watch the new star of the ring box: His dark good looks, long curly black hair, muscular athletic physique, and dancer-like movements in the ring made him popular with women too. Trollmann, a romantic opportunist, dated and bedded a number of his female fans. They turned out in droves for his fights the way later generations would flock to attend the concerts of their favorite rock musicians.
In 1933 a new and dangerous opportunity arrived for Trollmann. It was the year that Hitler came to power, and anti-Jewish rules were changing German society, especially in boxing. Seelig was the reigning middleweight champion and light heavyweight champ. On November 12, 1931, he had won the German middleweight title by defeating Hans Seifried. Then on February 26, 1933, he went on to win the German light-heavyweight title by defeating Helmut Hartkopp. Yet he could not remain in Germany to enjoy the benefits that accrued to champions. The Nazi-controlled German Athletic Commission warned Seelig that if he tried to defend his titles, he would be killed. The commission then stripped him of his titles. At the point of a gun, he and his parents left Germany for France, where Seelig had several fights before leaving for America via Cuba. In Paris in 1934, he had lost an opportunity to win the European middleweight title in a bout with Gustave Roth. Once in America, he proceeded to have one fight after another, defeating former champion Mickey Walker and going on to fight the talented Billy Conn. By the end of his career in 1940, Seelig had compiled a record of 40 victories, 7 draws, and 10 losses. His German titles were never restored.
Into this vacuum stepped Trollmann, eager to win the title and thumb his nose at the Olympic authorities who had denied him the opportunity to represent his country. His opponent would be Adolf Witt (aka, Vit), who was a favorite of the Nazis, who regarded him as a perfect Aryan specimen. The fight, however, turned out not to be what the Nazis had expected: Trollmann, ever fleet of foot, danced around his frustrated opponent, who delivered uppercuts and hooks to the air. Trollmann laughed at the swish-swish of Witt’s gloves passing before his face. Trollmann, with his fists as fast and fleeting as stinging wasps on an attack, dropped Witt six times, knocking him about the ring as if he were a child’s plastic blowup dummy. One could have said of him as boxing fans said of Muhammad Ali that he “floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee.”
Those not consumed by prejudice cheered Trollmann’s skill and whooped their approval whenever he landed a lightning combination of punches. Another contingent in the audience was not at all happy; they let their anger erupt in loud boos. They were Nazis who regarded Trollmann’s demonstration of pugilistic pyrotechnics as not in the German tradition of flat-footed, stand-your-ground boxing. Their anger was apparent in the faces of the Nazi ring judges; they attempted to end the fight after the 6th round. The destruction of the Aryan Witt was a symbolic disaster, something that the Nazis could not permit.4 The Nazis attempted to end the fight without declaring a winner. They wanted the fight immediately cancelled, erased from the history books as if it had never taken place. There was outrage among Trollmann’s fans as well as among those who regarded the cancellation of the bout as a denial of reality. The crowd forced the judges to rescind their decision and award the light-heavyweight title to Trollmann, who bowed his head and wept after the judges handed him his championship belt. The Nazis went home fuming; they could not permit a “Gypsy” to beat an Aryan, just as they could not let the expelled Jew, Erich Seelig, remain a champion. The undoing of Johann Trollmann’s title began a week after his fight. The German Pugilism Association, chaired by a viciously racist Nazi named Georg Radamm, told the German public that Trollmann had demonstrated an unGerman style of boxing that was an insult to Germanic tradition. Therefore Radamm stripped Trollmann of his light-heavyweight title, letting the fighter know that he wasn’t entitled to be called a German pugilist.
Less than two months passed, and Trollmann was permitted to fight again. He lost weight so that he could enter the bout as a welter-weight. To ensure that Trollmann did not win, he was also told that he had to fight in the German style: no fancy footwork, no bobbing and weaving, no darting in and darting out. Just stand in place and trade punches with his opponent. To further guarantee the outcome, Trollmann was told that his loss would spare his life. His opponent would be a notoriously effective brawler named Gustav Eder (aka, Iron Gustav). On July 27 1933, the two fighters would meet at the Bock Brauerei (Brewery) in Berlin. The two men were both 25 years old. Eder had won 32 of 49 bouts, 13 by knockouts. Trollmann had won 30 of 53 bouts, 11 by knockouts. The fight was scheduled for ten rounds. Eder was slightly shorter and lighter than Trollmann, and some thought Trollmann had an advantage for those reasons. Even without the racial laws that favored Eder, he would have been a tough opponent for Trollmann. Eder had been celebrated as the welterweight champion of Germany for all but a few months during a career that spanned twenty-one years. He lost his first attempt at the European welterweight title to Belgian Gustav Roth in 1931 then won the German welterweight title against Jupp Besselmann in 1933. He successfully defended the German title numerous times. He went on to win the European welterweight title in 1934 when he knocked out Nestor Charlier. He then lost the title to another Belgian fighter, Felix Wouters, in 1938 but won the German welterweight title against Alex Husditsch in 1939. He lost the German title to Dietrich Hucks in 1947, then won it back four months later in a bout with Alois Ulderich. By the end of his career, he was considered one of the top ten German fighters of the twentieth century.
Trollmann, with the mind of a nose-thumbing satirist, decided to enter the ring as a parody of an Aryan warrior. He dyed his hair a pale blond and covered his body in white powder. The crowd, even the Nazis among them, howled with laughter. And to demonstrate that he was not fearful of fighting by standard Nazi rules of comportment, Trollmann stood still and traded punches with his opponent. Unable to evade the stinging blows directed at him, Trollmann suffered a bloody, broken nose and puffed swollen eyes. Blood mixed with the white powder to create a gooey, sanguinary ointment that oozed over his face and dripped onto his chest and shoulders. Yet Eder also suffered from Trollmann’s powerful blows and his face was as bloody as a slab of raw beef. Though Trollmann delivered numerous powerful blows, he was not able to put Eder away. The two continued trading punches. Trollmann was sent to the canvas twice, but sprung up with the tenacity of a terrier. He was finally knocked out in the 5th round by a pair of rapid shots to his head.
Though he had made a satiric physical statement on Nazi racial policies, he was never again able to obtain a title fight in any weight division, for the boxing commission informed him that a “Gypsy” would never again be allowed to fight for a championship. The spirit of a rebellious warrior had been blown away by a hurricane of racial politics. Yet Trollmann continued to box in sanctioned and unsanctioned bouts, primarily for the money. The sanctioned matches were small regional ones that drew little or no media attention. Trollmann boxed because it was his profession. He had no other skills for earning a living.
He displayed his usual pyrotechnical skills in nine professional fights. The small crowds cheered him on, but he fought like one who knew his glory days were well behind him. Whenever the boxing authorities learned of one of his upcoming matches, they forced him to be a human punching bag. He collected his money then went into the night like a stray dog that had been kicked out of one warm shelter after another. Finally the boxing commission revoked his license to box, flinging him onto the garbage heap of failed dreams. Every time he attempted to arrange to get back in the ring, he was threatened with death. He did manage to fight at a few regional country fairs, but the money he earned was meager. It wasn’t enough to live on. Fed up and disgusted by the restrictions placed on him, he threw away his boxing gloves. It was two years into the life of the Third Reich, and Troll-mann knew that he would never again get a shot at wearing a championship belt. He became an itinerant farm worker, and it provided his only source of income.
The racial vilification that he and other Sinti experienced poisoned their existence. There was no escape from it. Trollmann existed in a dreary dystopia. Though his ambition to be a championship boxer had been suffocated, Trollmann found alternative happiness when he fell in love with eighteen-year-old Olga Bilda, a German girl who tried to look like a typical Aryan by dyeing her hair blonde. However, once again Nazi law would put its jackboot on the neck of Trollmann’s happiness: six months after the wedding, Nazi law declared that “Gypsies” could not marry Germans. Trollmann attempted to bypass the law by evading its enforcers. He and his wife moved from address to address, never leaving a forwarding address. In March 1935, Olga gave birth to a baby girl that the couple named Rita Edith. The daughter, as a half Sinti, was vulnerable to being a victim of the Nuremberg racial laws. With a baby to care for, it was difficult to move from address to address. So to protect his wife and daughter from being sent to a concentration camp, Trollmann divorced Olga in 1938. Trollmann hoped that without his daughter’s Sinti father in the family picture, Rita would be safe. However, when he subsequently learned that the Nazis regarded mixed race Sintis as more of a threat to their ideas of racial purity than pureblooded Sintis, he grew increasingly anxious about Rita’s safety. Perhaps Olga could hide the fact that Rita’s father was a Sinti.
Unfortunately, Trollmann was still well known. Try as he did, he could not successfully hide in the shadows of anonymity. People recognized him. They would ask for his autograph. His popularity did not go unnoticed by the Gestapo, and he was soon arrested and sent to a labor camp. Then he was unexpectedly released. Feeling lonely and defeated, feeling as if his freedom was hanging by a withering string, he settled for an anonymous living as a factory worker and an occasional bartender. However, bar patrons would occasionally recognize him. Those who were drunk and feeling mean and inspired would challenge him to a fight. It unnerved Trollmann that he was still being recognized. He had thought that his fame had faded and that boxing fans were focused on the new stars of the ring. When recognized, he would deny his identity, but sometimes he would be drawn into a fight by the opportunity to earn a small sum of money. In every case, he left his challengers on a dirty, beer-stained floor or on the dirt of a darkened alley, their face bruised and swollen from his rapid-fire blows. Such fights never lasted more than a few minutes. When rubbing his knuckles after a fight, Trollmann would look around, half expecting to see a pair of Gestapo agents ready to arrest him. Then he would move on to another bar and hide in a friend’s home until he felt safe. His actions were like those of a criminal hobo never venturing into the light of day. Yet he knew that his opportunities to remain free were shrinking, and he figured that sooner or later the Gestapo would clamp a pair of cuffs on his wrists and haul him off to prison.
Being a Sinti, Trollmann was living in a cage that got smaller day by day. Restrictions increased and in 1938, the “Gypsy Office” in Hannover told the Sinti they had a choice: either be sterilized or be interned in a concentration camp. About 10 percent of the Sinti population, including Trollmann, opted for sterilization, while others hoped that they could evade detainment in the camps. Nevertheless, many were rounded up and sent to a camp at Altwarmbuchener Moor. The SS decreed that each pure Sinti had to carry a brown identity card at all times, while each mixed-race Sinti had to carry a blue ID card.
On October 17, 1939, Reinhard Heydrich issued an order (Festsetzungserlab) prohibiting all mixed-race “Gypsies” and pure “Gypsies” from moving from their residences; in addition, their addresses had to be registered with the Gestapo. This was an essential form of census for maintaining the addresses of all Sinti so that they could be quickly identified and deported to concentration camps. While Sinti were being prepared for deportation, the German military saw no reason not to use Sinti and Roma as cannon fodder. In 1939, no longer able to maintain his anonymity and evade conscription, Trollmann was drafted into a Wehrmacht rifle company and sent to fight first in Poland, then Belgium and France, and finally on the Eastern Front, where he was wounded. He was permitted to go home for a brief furlough and recuperate from his wounds. Yet while he was fighting and nearly dying for the Third Reich, other Sinti were regularly being sent off to concentration camps in Germany and Austria. Others were being murdered in the infamous Chelmno extermination camp. No matter how bravely Sinti and Roma soldiers fought for the Reich, they were all dishonorably discharged from the military in 1942. Trollmann awaited his fate with deep foreboding.
Oddly, the military did not officially discharge Trollmann because he was a Sinti; rather, they pronounced him dishonorably discharged because he had been wounded. It was as if they were saying because you were wounded you did not fight bravely enough and are no longer of use to us. Soon thereafter he was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to the Neuengamme concentration camp. There he again attempted to hide his identity, but the commandant, a former boxing referee, recognized him. He assigned Trollmann the job of training the guards to box. Trollmann had to undertake the training sessions at night after working twelve hours a day in one of the 150 SS–owned factories or in the camp’s farm fields where vegetables were grown. If he were seen stealing vegetables, he would have been quickly shot, no questions asked. At the end of his twelve-hour shifts, he was exhausted and hungry, for the slave laborers were given far fewer calories than they burned during the day. Some soup and rotten potatoes did not make for a healthful diet.
At night, while training the guards to box, Trollmann was like a worn-out, heavy bag, not moving, just standing there and absorbing punch after punch. By the time he returned to his barrack, he was bruised over much of his body. His only rewards were a few additional scraps of food and a slice of bread. He managed to share his meager allotment with several other starving slave laborers. Though he was given more food than his fellow inmates, it was not enough to maintain his weight and health. He was emaciated, and his condition rapidly deteriorated, yet he continued to endure the punishing blows of the sadistic guards. His friends were worried about his worsening appearance, the bruises and cuts on his torso and face that never had a chance to heal. Trollmann’s friends in the barrack decided that Trollmann would not live much longer if he continued to be pummeled night after night. Led by a communist resistance leader named André Mandryxcs, the inmates agreed to fake Trollmann’s death and arrange for him to be sent to another labor camp. They exchanged his uniform with that of a dead inmate and alerted the camp doctor that Trollmann had died. He was listed as dead on February 9, 1944. The body of the dead inmate was quickly cremated and buried, and it was fortunate for Trollmann that the commandant never asked to see it. Typical of the SS’s scrupulous need to balance its books and maintain its usual parsimony, it billed the Trollmann family for the cost of the cremation and funeral.
Meanwhile, Mandryxcs managed to provide Trollmann with a new identity and mysteriously had him transferred to the nearby camp of Wittenberge. Relieved, Trollmann arrived at the camp believing that his ersatz identity would keep him from having to train more guards how to box. He was not to be so lucky. Before he could adjust to the new rules and brutal conditions of the camp, he was recognized by a notoriously vicious kapo and hardened professional criminal named Emil Cornelius. Trollmann had lost sixty pounds since his incarceration. He looked like a skeleton wrapped in a sheath of sickly pale skin marked by bruises and cuts. His expression was that of a desperate and frightened feral dog, one that has been repeatedly kicked and beaten. That Cornelius recognized him surprised Trollmann; he was hardly the fit boxing star who had dazzled fans just a few years earlier. To the Nazis, Trollmann was just another slave laborer, a commodity, whose only ID was his prison number, 9841. For Cornelius, however, Troll-mann represented an opportunity to pick on someone who was once thought invincible and was now a defeated wreck of a man. Cornelius took sadistic pleasure in hitting Trollmann with a club or a section of rubber hose. Each blow proved to Cornelius his own strength and Trollmann’s weakness and submission to a stronger man.
When the inmates learned of Trollmann’s identity and saw Cornelius’s mistreatment of him, they managed to talk the kapo into having a boxing match with Trollmann. They organized a match that would be widely attended for everyone wanted to see the former star of the ring. Was he still the old “Gypsy in the Ring?” The camp’s guards attended, and when they got a look at Trollmann, they bet on Cornelius to win. The inmates had no money to bet, but they wanted to see Trollmann beat the hated kapo. Though tired and in obviously bad shape, Trollmann called upon his old ring skills, and with a sense of vengeance for the beatings that Cornelius had administered, Troll-mann managed to land hard punches on the kapo’s face and skull. Trollmann continuously danced around the confused kapo, darting in, landing punch after punch, then darting away as Cornelius swung wildly at a phantom. Cornelius did not land a single blow. The inmates cheered Trollmann’s ring technique and marveled at his ability to dash out of the range of Cornelius. That a man so beaten down and emaciated could put up such a remarkable fight won him the plaudits of his fellow inmates. The guards, meanwhile, screamed and cursed at Cornelius. In a final display of skill, Trollmann knocked out the humiliated kapo, who flopped to the ground like a dying fish out of water. He lay there for several minutes then raised himself from his supine position and with one hand wiped blood from his mouth and nose. His eyes raged with vengeance.
His humiliation would not go unanswered. For the next few days, Cornelius proceeded to assign Trollmann to back-breaking work and denied him food. When Trollmann didn’t move fast enough, Cornelius whacked him with a club. Then in a fit of rage, he rushed at Trollmann from behind and hit him on the head with a club. Again and again, he brought the club down on Trollmann’s bleeding skull. Trollmann collapsed. He was no longer breathing. It was obvious that he was dead. Cornelius reported the death as an accident and threatened a witness with death if he revealed what had happened to the SS. But the SS did not care. Trollmann was just another dead Sinti. He would soon be replaced by another slave laborer. After all, each slave laborer eventually succumbed to malnutrition or disease and was replaced by a relatively healthy specimen who would also deteriorate, die, and be replaced.
Trollmann was thirty-six years old when he died. As a younger man, he thought he would be the most celebrated boxer in Germany, perhaps in all of Europe. At some point, he dreamed of even being a world champion who would beat challengers not only in Europe, but also in North and South America.
In 2003, seventy years after he had become a German champion and then was stripped of the light-heavyweight title, he was officially recognized by the German Boxing Federation as the 1933 Light Heavyweight Champion. His surviving relatives received his championship belt. In 2010, a temporary monument was erected in Berlin’s Viktoria Park to commemorate Trollmann’s achievement as a boxer and mourn his death, though there were very few who remembered him or had seen his fleeting victories. The monument was an exact replica in concrete of a boxing ring. Like Trollmann’s title, it was soon removed. Trollmann had fought heroically, both as a free man and as an inmate of a concentration camp. He had an innate dignity that the Nazis were not able to quell even when he satirically appeared in the ring as an ersatz Aryan. To the end, he was another Holocaust hero. In 2016, the Nobel Prize–winning author Dario Fo published Razza di zingaro, a novel based on the life of Trollmann.