The Holocaust was a very dark period in world history, one of the worst times. Between the mass genocide, the fear, the very disgusting concentration camp experiments, and the aftereffects, the Holocaust left its mark on the world. The Berlin Boxing Club tells the story of a young Jewish boy living in Germany in the mid to late 1930s. Karl Stern is an average boy. He goes to school, keeps his head down, helps his parents out when he is home, and does not talk about being Jewish. Hitler’s rule greatly affects the entire country, but especially those with even a drop of Jewish heritage in their blood. Those who were not killed were beaten or tortured or had experiments performed on them without their consent. Many were branded with numbers, starved, mutilated, and almost any twisted, atrocious thing a human being can possibly thing of. The Berlin Boxing Club provides a different perspective at which to view the Holocaust, and allows the reader to sympathize even more for those involved in any way in the Holocaust.

The Stern family lives a normal life. Sig, Karl’s father, owns and operates an art gallery in Berlin that brings in most of the family’s money. Karl attends school, as does his younger sister Hildy. Although they are not practicing Jewish people, they are of Jewish descent and when Hitler comes to power they know they will most likely be in trouble. The book centers around Karl’s trials and tribulations. He becomes known as a “Jew” at his school and gets badly beaten by other older boys at his school, and eventually expelled for his family’s Jewish. After meeting him at his father’s gallery, Karl begins learning the sport of boxing from German world champion boxer, Max Schmeling. Although at first not very strong or trained, Karl takes very well to Max’s teachings and becomes good enough to compete. He only loses when he fights one of the older boys from his former school who tells the judges that Karl is Jewish, and therefore disqualified from competing. Hitler’s regime becomes stronger throughout the book as Sig’s business becomes thin, his artwork stolen, and the gallery itself that the family was forced to live in, vandalized. Karl must take charge and help his family as best he can, and he does. Eventually Karl asks the famous boxer for help, and Max is able to get the Stern family safely to America, away from the persecution.

The setting of this novel is one most students and educated persons are familiar with. The Holocaust is taught in almost all history classes in the United States, as well as most other countries that do not believe in or allow censorship. It is known as one of the worst times ever in history, and affected more people than the world may ever know. Hitler’s rule sought to eliminate all people who were not “perfect” and would take away from the pure German race he wanted to create. The Nazis killed, tortured, threw in to concentration camps, performed abhorrent experiments on, and ruined the lives of many many innocent human beings. Of the many groups he wanted to eliminate, The Berlin Boxing Club centers around the treatment of the Jewish people in mid to late 1930s Germany. Other persecuted groups include, but are not limited to, the disabled, the mentally ill, the Polish, the gypsies, the communists, homosexuals, and anyone who did not fit into the perfect Aryan race he desired. Those who were just killed, some considered to be lucky. In the novel, Karl’s family was very lucky, escape was not possible for many. The concentration camps are still known today for the world’s worst torture. Gas chambers, cold experiments, invasive unnecessary surgeries, starvation, and mental torture all could have been possibilities for the fictional Stern family. 

Although there have been many many books written on the Holocaust, most are non-fiction or close to it. The Berlin Boxing Club is a piece of historical fiction that comes from a newer, fresher perspective. A lot of books written about the Holocaust were written from a Jewish person’s perspective, but what makes this book stand out more, is the fact that it is written from the perspective of a semi-Jewish teenage boy. The book is marketed towards young adults, and spares readers many of the very gruesome details of the Holocaust. It is a book that can spark a younger person’s interest in history, while also not being overwhelmingly violent. 

The book received many accolades upon its publishing. In 2012 The Berlin Boxing Club received the Sydney Taylor Award (for Teen Readers). The Association of Jewish Libraries calls it a “novel that entwines Karl’s personal struggles with the historical ones of the period including “degenerate” art and the Nazi menace, well-developed characters and a tense plot propel this page turner.” The book received a warm welcome on the literary scene for being a very balanced historical fiction novel that could appeal to a younger demographic while still staying true to history.

Although many people are familiar with the events of the Holocaust (genocide, concentration camps, Doctor Mengele, etc), The Berlin Boxing Club sheds a different, slightly more positive, light on what was arguably the worst time in history. The book has Karl and his family managing to make it out of Germany and to the United States, safely. There were indeed thousands of persecuted people who managed to make it to other countries including the United States, but that was not the norm for people living in fear during the Holocaust. As mentioned earlier, most people who were not considered “perfect” by Hitler and the Nazi regime were killed or worse. What people may be less familiar with, is the fact that even those non-practicing Jewish people were also persecuted by not just Nazis but Nazi supporters. Not only were adults sought out and killed, but children in schools. The popularity of boxing in the 1930s as compared to today is quite different. Being a world class boxer in the 1930s meant international fame and fortune, while today the many other more widely televised sports are football, soccer, basketball, etc. 

The Berlin Boxing Club sheds a little more light on what was one of the darkest times in world history. The perspective of a young Jewish-by-ancestry teenage boy allows younger readers to connect more with the text and the history, as well as sympathize more with the survivors and victims of the Holocaust.
