The Berlin Boxing Club

Karl receives a mysterious package in the mail from a sender—Albert Broder—he doesn’t recognize. The package is from Neblig; Albert Broder is his real name. It contains a batch of American comic books for Karl, as well as a short note, stating that he is missed at the boxing club.

Karl is most mesmerized by the new Superman comic book. He feels a hopeful identification with Superman, who, like him, is an outsider, a nerd disguised as a muscleman, and who uses his powers to help the downtrodden. He is inspired to draw his own superhero: the Mongrel. A cartoon excerpt of the Mongrel’s origin story is included in the chapter. Evil Nazi scientists create the Mongrel as an attempt to demonstrate the inferiority of mongrel blood; however, the baby ends up being strong and healthy, so the scientists must banish him. He is adopted by a boxing coach, who teaches him the martial arts; once the Mongrel reaches manhood, he becomes a masked crusader for the helpless. 

Karl goes to the club to find and thank Neblig, and to show him his new superhero. The club has been shut down and absorbed by the clothing factory that occupies the rest of the building; however, Neblig is still working there as a janitor.

The two of them talk during Neblig’s lunch break. Neblig tells Karl that it was Worjyk who shut the club down and that he had “good reasons” for doing so (321). He then gives Karl a letter that Worjyk had left for him, in case he should return to the club. It turns out that Worjyk has fled for Palestine—that he, too, is Jewish. The letter is an apology for not having stood up for Karl when he was banished from the tournament.

Karl then tells Neblig about the stolen Picasso painting and about how trapped and poor his family is. Neblig suggests that Karl get in touch with Max Schmeling when he returns from the States, where he is training for his second match with Joe Louis. He also tells him that Barney Ross, Karl’s Jewish boxing hero, has lost the welterweight championship. 

Karl and his family listen to Max Schmeling’s rematch with Joe Louis on the radio in their apartment; they cannot risk going out, as violence against Jews has become more and more rampant. The fight takes place in New York City, and there is much weighing on it. Louis quickly gains the upper hand in the fight and beats Schmeling before the first round is over. The moment it becomes clear that Schmeling has lost the match, the broadcast is turned off.

Karl wonders if, and how, he should reach out to Schmeling, now that he has lost the match. He speculates that Schmeling might have more time and sympathy for him, having fallen out of favor with the Nazis; on the other hand, he might have less leverage and power. He ends up writing Schmeling a brief note, asking if they can meet when he returns to Germany. While delivering the note that night, he just escapes being harassed by a gang of brownshirts (Hitler-affiliated troops), who are angry about the outcome of the match. 

Max Schmeling returns to Germany, with little fanfare this time. Karl sends him repeated letters but receives no response.

The Nazis continue their unchecked rise to power. Karl and his family read in the papers about their annexation of Sudetanland and Austria, and about 15,000 Polish Jews being sent from Germany back to Poland. When they hear that a French Polish Jew, whose family has been deported, has shot and killed a German diplomat in retaliation, they fear the worst. Later that night, Dolph Lutz, the policeman friend of Karl’s father,stops by their apartment to warn them about the Nazi-sponsored riots against Jews that are taking place all over the city, an event that will come to be known as Kristallnacht.

Karl and his family turn out the lights in their apartment and lie low, hearing the sounds of rioting and glass shattering on the street. The front window of their own gallery shatters, and brownshirts break into their living space. Karl’s father goes out to fight them off, with Karl following. Though Karl’s father fights impressively, a brownshirt eventually stabs him with a piece of glass. Karl is pinned and trampled and feels himself losing consciousness. 

Karl’s father, though severely wounded, takes charge. He instructs Karl’s mother to bandage his wound with his ripped-up shirts and to fetch him and Karl glasses of water. He tells Karl’s mother that they need to go to a doctor so that he can have the piece of glass removed from his side without further injury and asks her to call Hartzel—the man whose paintings he long ago showed at the gallery—to take him to the hospital.

When Hartzel arrives in his car, he tells the family that it is not safe for the children to come along.While the riots have receded in this neighborhood, they are still going on elsewhere. Rebecca and Sigmund Stern must hide under a piece of drop cloth in the backseat of the car, so as not to attract attention. Karl and Hildy say goodbye to their parents on the street. For the first time, Karl kisses his father on the cheek; Karl’s father tells him, “I finally got to see you fight. You must be something in the ring” (347). 

Left alone with Hildy in their ruined apartment, Karl calls on the Countess for help. She arrives dressed as a woman and instructs Hildy to call her Aunt Bernie. She walks with them to her apartment, which is in a safe, non-Jewish neighborhood. On their way there, they pass Karl’s old school friend, Kurt, who, while not wearing Nazi regalia, is carrying a pair of looted Sabbath candlesticks. Kurt is with two other boys, and they ask the Countess if anything is left to loot; she replies that there is not. Kurt then looks at Karl and obviously recognizes him, but says nothing.

In the Countess’s apartment, the children drink hot chocolate and listen to Josephine Baker records. Before falling asleep, Karl opens his and Hildy’s sacks to check on what they have taken from their apartment; he is relieved and touched to see that Hildy has taken along the first Winzig and Spatz book. 

The Countess’s friend, Herr Braun, calls hospitals all over Berlin, but there is no record anywhere of Sigmund Stern being admitted. Meanwhile, the rioting outside continues, with some Jews even being forced to clean up the mess that the Nazis have made. Against Herr Braun’s and the Countess’s advice, Karl seeks out Max Schmeling at his hotel, as a last rescue resort.

The Excelsior is an enormous, grand hotel. Though Karl fears he will be turned away, he is admitted into Schmeling’s suite of rooms. Schmeling is busy conferring with two men about his future in boxing, and he tells Karl to wait for him in a separate room. As Karl listens to their conversation, he is struck by Schmeling’s myopia and self-absorption. He also notices a framed photograph of Hitler on Schmeling’s table, beside a photo of Schmeling’s wife.

Once Schmeling makes himself available to Karl, Karl angrily confronts him, asking him why he is not doing more to combat the Nazi regime. Schmeling is defensive and evasive, insisting that he can do only so much. He tells Karl that in placating men like Hitler, he is practicing a real-life version of what is known in boxing as “the feint”: a technique of letting your opponent think that you are doing one thing, when you are in fact doing the opposite.

Karl then bursts into tears, tells Schmeling that his parents are missing, and rhetorically asks him how a fine technique like “the feint” is supposed to help him in his present situation. 

Karl and Hildy leave the Countess’s apartment and are driven in Schmeling’s Mercedes to the Excelsior. They meet Schmeling at the service entrance, and a janitor takes the three of them up in the delivery elevator, so as not to attract attention.

Karl and Hildy must stay hidden in Schmeling’s suite while he asks around for news of their parents. While Schmeling is away making inquiries at the local police precinct, Karl and Hildy hear maids come into the room. Karl leads Hildy into the master bedroom and opens the closet door; he shelters her in a suitcase while he himself hides in the top shelf of an armoire. Though the maids come right into the closet to clean, they fail to find the children. Karl and Hildy hide until the maids leave. 

Karl and Schmeling go out in Schmeling’s car to look for Rebecca and Sigmund Stern, while Hildy stays behind in the hotel. They drive through the ruined streets to the family’s old gallery and living quarters. There, Karl finds his mother in a traumatized state, fully clothed and sitting in the bathtub. Though shocked and disoriented, she eventually collects herself and allows herself to be taken away; with a mysterious decisiveness, she collects several art books beforehand. She tells Karl and Schmeling that the Gestapohas taken Sigmund away.

Once at the Excelsior, and reunited with Hildy, she tells them the full story. She and her husband went first to a Nazi hospital and then to a Jewish one, where his wounds were treated. They then returned to the gallery to look for the children, butthey were discovered and questioned by the Gestapo. Sigmund was arrested on the charge of printing subversive materials.

Rebecca reads a quote from Reich Minister Goebbels out loud from a newspaper: “Reich Minister Goebbels commented that the [Kristallnacht] demonstrations reflected the healthy instincts of the German people” (387). 

Max Schmeling and Rebecca Stern fail to find Sigmund Stern, and are able to determine only that he has been put in the Gerlach Haus, a prison for political agitators. Meanwhile, Rebecca tells her children that she has booked a passage from Hamburg to the United States for them on a ship called the Amerika. She tells them that Schmeling has paid for their passage and that once in the States, they are to stay with different relatives: Hildy with some cousins in New Jersey, and Karl with some cousins in Florida.

Schmeling accompanies the three of them on the train to Hamburg. In their passenger car, while Schmeling has gone off to the restroom, a pair of Gestapo police questions the family. Schmeling returns in time to deflect their questions and to persuade the men to look in the other direction.

The children say goodbye to their mother at the boat docking, with no guarantee that they will ever see her or their father again. Their mother gives Karl the art books that she collected at the apartment and tells him that they have valuables hidden inside. Should anything happen to her or to their father, he is to present the books to a rare books dealer named Louis Cohen, who is based in New York. That night in their boat cabin, unable to sleep, Karl gives in to the temptation to open the secret compartments in the books. There he discovers, in addition to valuable art works by Durer, Rembrandt, and Picasso, a George Grosz portrait of his father. He also finds the study of the Grosz painting of Schmeling that set so much in motion in his own life. Looking at the two sketches side by side, he reflects on the differences and the similarities between the two men: “They each strove to define themselves as individuals, and each failed because of the Nazis” (398).

The book ends with a final Winzig and Spatz cartoon. The stationmaster, Fefelfarve, has decided to finally eradicate all of the “vermin” in the station for good and has set up traps and poison everywhere (399). Yet Winzig and Spatz have already escaped him and are flying across the ocean to America.