Tadeusz Pietrzykowski

Tadeusz Pietrzykowski (; 8 April 191717 April 1991) was a Polish boxer, Polish Armed Forces soldier, and a prisoner at the Auschwitz-Birkenau and Neuengamme concentration camps run by the German Nazis during World War II. He was part of the first mass transport to Auschwitz in June 1940, and was transferred to Neuengamme in 1943. He is remembered as the boxing champion of Auschwitz. Pietrzykowski's life story has been the subject of several books and movies.

Early life

Pietrzykowski was born on 8 April 1917 in Warsaw to father Tadeusz, an engineer, and mother Sylwina (née Bieńkowska), a teacher, both members of the Polish intelligentsia. In his youth he joined the boxing section of the Legia Warsaw club, where he trained under Feliks Stamm. He received a number of positive write-ups in the interwar Polish sports press, and was nicknamed "Teddy" or "Teddi". A 1938 edition of the Polish sports magazine Przegląd Sportowy declared him "the best bantamweight boxer in Warsaw". Around that time he suffered an injury and was expelled from his school, and his boxing section was disbanded. Sometimes his opponents were prisoner volunteers. Pietrzykowski tried to adjust his style to his opponents, avoiding injuring them (unless they were German kapos) and prolonging the fights for the amusement of the onlookers. He also sparred with other soldiers, winning his Division lightweight boxing championship in 1946. Pietrzykowski's story was also featured in a movie about famous Polish boxers, Ring Wolny (2018). Another movie about his life, The Champion, with Piotr Głowacki as the main protagonist, was announced in 2019 and was planned to premier in Poland in the autumn of 2020, but was delayed till spring 2021.

In April 2020, the town council of Bielsko-Biała announced it would commemorate Pietrzykowski.

In May 2021, an exhibition of Pietrzykowski's paintings entitled Tadeusz Pietrzykowski – A Warrior with an Artist's Soul, was opened at the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk.

His story is also featured in Andrzej Fedorowicz's 2020 historical book Gladiatorzy obozów śmierci (The Gladiators of the Death Camps).

In 2021, a Łódź-based Polish rapper, Basti, released an album entitled Osobisty Zbiór Wartości (Personal Set of Values) featuring a song "Teddy" devoted to Pietrzykowski.