Medal

Held by

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

Dates

1941 (indexed as 1941)

Level

item

Extent

Medal : moulded, stamped, embossed, engraved : silver

Scope & content

Octogonal shaped medal from the Olympia boxing club. Upper side edges have been cut like a wreath; other edges have a thin border. There is a raised circle just inside the octagon wit han image of a two men boxing on a ring in the centre. Attached to top edge is a square eye with hole in the middle. an oval link is passing through with another ring going through the link. 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.

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Genre / form

object

In the picture

AthleteMedalSportTagged automatically by a vision model; 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_27.jpg
• imageOpen original at source ↗1990_83_27b.jpg