The Jewish boxer Leen Sanders (Rotterdam, 1908) was considered, together with Bep van Klaveren, to be one of the greatest Dutch boxing talents of the early 20th century. He had already achieved international fame when he and his family were deported to Auschwitz via Westerbork on 11 January 1943. His wife and two sons, aged eight and ten, were murdered immediately upon arrival. Leen escaped the gas chamber after an SS officer recognised the boxer. On condition that he would compete in boxing matches in the camp, for the entertainment of Nazi leaders, he was put to work in the kitchen. For two years, Leen managed to keep himself alive, as well as many of his fellow prisoners, by stealing food and clothing and distributing them among the most vulnerable. In Leen Sanders: the boxer who saved lives in Auschwitz, Erik Brouwer tells the incredible life story of a true war hero, based on extensive research.
“For some people, no statue was erected, and it was wrong,” wrote resistance fighter Bill Minco shortly after Sanders’ death. Erik Brouwer, author of the new book ‘ Leen Sanders ’, which will be published in April, agrees. “I came across him years ago when I wrote a boxing article for a sports magazine. In an archive, I came across Louis van Sinderen, who, with a group of boxers, picked up pamphlets in the Kralingse Bos that the English dropped. That resistance group also included a certain Leen Sanders, a Jewish boxer. He immediately caught my attention, because you don’t see that very often. I discovered that he survived Auschwitz and saved the lives of fellow prisoners. That story has always stayed with me,” says Brouwer when I meet him in front of the city hall. The English rights to his book have already been sold for publication.
From the city hall we walk through the district where the boxer was born: the notorious Zandstraatbuurt. A shady area full of bars, brothels, criminals, dance halls and prostitutes. Although the impoverished district was demolished in 1912 to make way for the current city hall, among other things, Brouwer brings this exciting district back to life. “I immersed myself in pre-war Rotterdam. Through photos and newspaper articles I came across people like Rie Brusse, a journalist who wrote stories and portraits about the ghetto as it was called. It is a slum where the poorest Rotterdammers lived, mixed with pimps and their 'girls', alcoholics, fighters and in between a Jewish community. That Brusse hung around there with artists like painter Kees van Dongen and poet Koos Speenhoff. Tuschinski had his first cinema here. All the artists came to the Zandstraat, that's where it happened.” \ [img]https://image.trouw.nl/230261359/wi...s-in-de-jaren-dertig-nederlands-kampioen[/img]
