{"product_id":"9781913491123","title":"Champion : A German Boxer, a Jewish Assassin and Hitler's Revenge by Stephen Deutsch","description":"Dark haired, slight, with deep-set haunted eyes, Herschel Grynszpan is an undocumented Jewish alien living in Paris. He receives a postcard from his parents - recently bundled from their Hanover flat, put on a train and dumped, with 12,000 others on the Polish border. Enraged, Herschel buys a gun and kills a minor German official in the German Embassy. The repercussions trigger Kristalnacht, the nationwide pogrom against the Jews in Germany and Austria, a calamity which some have called the opening act of the Holocaust. Intertwined is the parallel life of the German boxer, Max Schmeling, who as a result of his victory over the then `invincible' Joe Louis in 1936 became the poster boy of the Nazis. He and his movie-star wife, Anny Ondra, were feted by the regime - tea with Hitler, a passage on the airship Hindenburg - until his brutal two-minute beating in the rematch with Louis less than two years later. His story reaches a climax during Kristalnacht, where the champion performs an act of quiet heroism.\u003cbr\u003eBinding: Paperback \/ softback","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56313165545845,"sku":"9781913491123","price":10.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781913491123.jpg?v=1762825733","url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/products\/9781913491123","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}