Medal

Held by

Montreal Holocaust Museum via Canadian Jewish Heritage Network (incl. Alex Dworkin Canadian Jewish Archives)

Dates

1936 (indexed as 1936)

Level

item

Extent

Medal : moulded, stamped, embossed, engraved : gold

Scope & content

Cross-shaped medal from the Olympia boxing club, with a circle in the centre and coming out if the cross arms. The centre circle has an image of two men boxing. An eye is attached to the top arm of the cross, centre with a metal ring going through. The back is smooth and has an inscription. Narrative: Medal was won by donor, David Kropveld. David Kropveld was born on January 3, 1918, in Amsterdam, Holland. David took up boxing as a young man and participated in competitions. In July 1940, David and his father joined the White Brigade resistence group in the south of France. As members of the White Brigade, David and his father gave up their Jewish identities. In October 1942, David was arrested while smuggling war-related information between occupied and Vichy France. He was tortured for ten days before being released. He was reunited with his father in Brussels, but the two were arrested by Gestapo officers one week later. They were incarcerated for three months and deported to Auschwitz concentration camp (Poland). Father and son wore the badges of political prisoners and were selected for the slave labour camp of Monowitz, where they stayed for about five days prior to being transferred to camp of Treblinka (Poland). In Treblinka, David witnessed his father’s murder at the hands of a guard. In the fall of 1944, a guard recognized David as a boxer he had admired and had him transferred back to Auschwitz and Monowitz in December 1944 to compete boxing matches against other prisoners. In December 1944, David managed to escape the death march with a few iother prisoners. He was rescued shortly after and brought to a hospital until his health improved. No members of his family survived the war. In the summer of 1945, David met his wife. In 1947, the couple emigrated to Cuba, and in 1950, to Montreal where David began a successful career as a butcher.

Location

No place found in this description yet.

Locate this photo

Genre / form

object

In the picture

CrossMedalSportTagged automatically by a vision model; may contain mistakes.

Text in the image

cjhn.caRead automatically; may contain mistakes.

Harvested

2026-10-19T03:21:16Z · source datestamp n/a · andornot

Digital objects at the source

• imageOpen original at source ↗1990_83_25.jpg
• imageOpen original at source ↗1990_83_25b.jpg