In 1933, Johann Trollmann won Germany's light-heavyweight boxing title. The Nazis would not accept him as the winner because he was Sinto. Many Sinti and Roma (or "Gypsies") had long been involved in the sport, but Nazi ideology demanded that only Aryans excel as fighters. Trollmann used his visibility in the ring for shocking and aggressive protest, turning boxing into politically charged performance art. He fought for his country, and against its prejudice. Roma and Sinti were victims of fascism, but they also were soldiers, activists, and underground resistors. Since World War II, there has been a struggle to obtain greater recognition of this past. From underground fight nights to Madison Square Garden, from secret partisan meetings to concentration camp uprisings, across several continents, this is a hard-hitting look at forgotten history. 

Johann Trollmann and Romani Resistance to the Nazis by Jud Nirenberg is an important book…a gripping account of the Gypsy persecution during the Holocaust. Lacking an influential and well placed diaspora and important institutional support, the Gypsy story has been ignored or consigned to footnotes.

Nirenberg’s book will take its place as a major contribution to this belated awakening. The book reaches back long before Trollmann to sketch the history of the Gypsy migration into Europe and the centuries of persecution of this the largest unsettled minority in Europe. As Nirenberg forcefully points out even today the European Gypsies have an uncertain existence, still discriminated against, humiliated and misunderstood. Only fitfully have Europeans now come to recognize their debts to the past and their responsibilities for the future. Nirenberg has gripping, fluent style and his book is strongly recommended.

Prof. Ernest Latham, Ph.D., historian
instructor (retired) US Dept. of State Foreign Service Institute