JULI 2014
Artifact of the month for July 2014
Diploma and portrait drawing
Diploma and portrait drawing
Charles Braude (1915 - 1991)
Charles Braude was born in Kristiania in 1916 as the second youngest child to Benzel Haskell (born in Lithuania in 1890) and Bertha Braude (born in Lithuania in 1892). Benzel came to Norway in 1911 and worked both as a sausage maker for the Jewish community as well as a travelling tradesman throughout the southern parts of Norway. During the arrest of the Jews in the fall of 1942, Benzel and Bertha and two of their sons, Isaac Joseph (b. 1914) and Harry (b. 1919), were deported to Auschwitz. Only their daughter Helene (who fled to Sweden in 1940) and Charles survived the war. Because of his marriage to a non-Jewish woman, Charles Braude was not deported, but held as a prisoner at Berg internment camp from 1942 until liberation in 1945. The portrait drawing is made at Berg, by a fellow prisoner (Herløv Åmland) and dated April 9, 1945.
Charles Braude’s sporting interest was awakened early. So were his political convictions. By the age of 17 he joined the Fagen 26, a boxing club in the Workers' Sports Association (AIF). Along with Heiman Lewenstein (1920-1942, died in Auschwitz) and Charles Kermann (1916-1943, died in Auschwitz), Braude was the only AIF boxer with a Jewish background in Oslo in the 1930s. As a flyweight, he won numerous championships, both at home and abroad. After the war he started Aktiv Atlet, working both as a trainer and an adviser to younger boxers.
Read more about Charles Braude’s boxing career in our new exhibition "Integration and the joy of sports".
