MAX SCHMELING DIES: NAZI SYMBOL WHO SHELTERED JEWS

Nazi poster boy who saved Jews on Kristalnacht dead at 99
By Michael Hirsley

Max Schmeling was known briefly as the heavyweight champion of the world, and known all his life as the loser of boxing's most publicized bout.Schmeling, who died Wednesday at age 99 of an undisclosed cause, was an ironic icon in Nazi Germany. He was an athlete hailed as a symbol of "Aryan supremacy" even as he befriended many Jews and boxed for a Jewish manager the Nazis could not persuade him to remove.

He dined with Adolf Hitler and kept an autographed picture of Der Fuhrer in his study. But on Kristallnacht, Nov. 9, 1938, when Nazi gangs destroyed Jewish property and assaulted and killed Jews, Schmeling sheltered two Jewish youths, Henri and Werner Lewin, in his Berlin apartment and helped them flee. He received an award from the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation for risking his life in doing so. "He risked his life for us; our lives weren't worth a penny,'' Henri Lewin said in a 2002 interview with the Jewish Bulletin of Northern California.

Despite a dramatic rise and fall in his government's eyes, he persisted over the years as one of Germany's biggest sports celebrities. He fought Joe Louis, America's superb heavyweight, twice in New York's Yankee Stadium. Underdog Schmeling won their first meeting with a 12th-round knockout in 1936. But it is the rematch that is remembered by everyone who knows boxing. And by many who don't. On June 22, 1938, in a heavyweight title fight that stirred incredible passion and publicity on the eve of World War II, Louis scored a devastating first-round knockout.

When the German upset the unbeaten Louis, a 10-1 favorite in their first fight, the budding Nazi regime hailed him. As American awareness of Hitler grew, Schmeling, who was initially popular in the United States, was reviled as he returned to New York for the rematch. The fight ended quickly and violently. Schmeling was dragged to his corner and carried from the arena after Louis punished him with a body shot that caused him to scream and three knockdowns that persuaded his corner to rush into the ring to stop the fight before referee Arthur Donovan could count to 10.

That ending was cut short and silenced on the German radio broadcast. This time, when Schmeling returned to his homeland, he was not welcomed at the airport and he became persona non grata in Nazi war propaganda. In truth, he wanted neither the prejudicial adulation nor the political disdain that followed the Louis fights.

"Looking back, I'm almost happy I lost that fight," he told the Associated Press in 1975. "Just imagine if I would have come back to Germany with a victory. I had nothing to do with the Nazis, but they would have given me a medal. After the war I might have been considered a war criminal." A British military court eventually cleared Schmeling of any Nazi taint.

As Schmeling regained a normal life and became a successful entrepreneur, he befriended Louis. Most dramatically, when the American champion fell destitute in his later years, Schmeling visited and gave financial help to the man who vanquished him in the ring. He also paid for Louis' funeral in 1981. "Max Schmeling was a good fighter and a great man," boxing historian Bert Sugar said. Because Schmeling was a tool of Nazi propaganda and "a hyphen to Joe Louis" most of the time his name was mentioned in America, Sugar said, "He is remembered for all the wrong reasons."

Sugar recalled once meeting Schmeling at a function in Las Vegas and asking about his relationship with the Nazis. "He told me, 'Ya, I had dinner with Der Fuhrer. I had turned him down four times, and you don't turn Der Fuhrer down five times. That did not make me a Nazi.
"I also had dinner with Franklin Roosevelt. That did not make me a Democrat."