SPORTS
The Bar Kochba squad, Leo
Vogelfang's original German Jewish
boxing team, in Aachen, in 1924.
Mr. Vogelfang is third from the
right.
Fighting For Jewish Pride
A Miami man still vividly remembers boxing as a Jew in Germany before World War II.
ERIC ROSENMAN
Special to The Jewish News
L
eo Vogelfang is 80 now,
retired and living in
Miami Beach. He car-
ries a pale blue three-ring
binder holding 42 pages of
computer-printed manuscript
and two dozen photographs.
Leo Vogelfang, then Maccabi lightweight champion, in the ring in Miami
Beach, in 1942.
The scrapbook tells two
separate, but connected
stories.
The first is of a hardfisted
school dropout who left
Germany for America more
than half a century ago. He
was a self-confident young
man who introduced himself
to his wife-to-be on a virtu-
ally deserted beach, and who
became a physical therapist
and trainer to the rich and
famous.
The second story is of an
emigrant who could never
forget what and who he left
behind and sees the faces of
murdered family members
and friends whenever he
opens his book.
Mr. Vogelfang was born in
1911 in Cologne, Germany.
Since his parents were Pol-
ish Jews, he and his sister
and brother also were con-
sidered Polish.
The family owned and liv-
ed in a five-story building in
Cologne. His parents ran a
delicatessen and grocery on
the first floor. At 11, Leo
was pounding his fists into
big bags of sugar when he
was not making deliveries
on a secondhand bicycle. His
mother made and sold baked
goods and the family rented
apartments to other Jews.
Two blocks away was the
Starnagasse Rubinsthall
Gym. Max Schmeling, the
German and world heavy-
weight boxing champion,
worked out there — under
the eye of a Jewish trainer.
Leo Vogelfang, and the oth-
er Jewish boys of the neigh-
borhood, were captivated.
"After school every day, I
watched Schmeling train,"
Mr. Vogelfang wrote in his
manuscript. "I was 14 years
old and I was training in the
same gym."
He and other Jewish boys
in the neighborhood formed
the Bar Kochba boxing club.
Named for the leader of the
second Judean revolt
against Rome, the club was
"where our Jewish boys
could train to protect them-
selves from the Christian
boys," Vogelfang recalled.
Boxing-mad, he had al-
ready quit school.
"The day I left, the teach-
er called me in and said not
to worry about not being
good in school," Mr.
Vogelfang wrote. "He said
he thought I could be suc-
cessful in my private life."
The Bar Kochba club was
succeeded by the Cologne
Maccabi boxing team, which
Mr. Vogelfang recollects as
one of the best in Germany.
One day in 1927, they got
to prove their talent when
Leo's grandfather, an Or-
thodox Jew, was bathing in
the city pool.
"A big Nazi came up to
him, pushed him and called
him a dirty Jew," the grand-
son recalled about the inci-
dent six years before Hitler
took power. But Max
Buchbaum, "a middleweight
Maccabi Champion and one
of three fighting brothers —
Herman and Heinie also
were there... walked up to
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
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