The French press is delighted in advance, “the boxing champion Boxim Asloum returns to the ring, puts his boxing gloves, on the big screen where he plays Victor Perez, a Jewish boxer of Arab origin deported during the Second World War.”
“Victor Young Perez” A historic film by Jacques Ouaniche whose release date in France is scheduled for November 20, is the long -awaited film which traces the life of this boxer with extraordinary destiny.
“136 fights, 91 victories including 27 by KO, world champion in fly weights, is in the ring. Faced with him Kurtz, the German soldier; 20 centimeters and 20 kilos more than him. Around him the chimneys of the crematorium ovens spit the ashes of his comrades of misfortune.
And yet, encouraged by his brother Benjamin also deported and by thousands of silent looks, Victor, this little Arab Jew, will stand up to these monsters for fifteen rounds. During the hell of this fight, Victor will see his life scrolling: his carefree youth in Tunis with Rachid, Maxo and Benjamin.
He will find love with the Bellissime Mireille. He will relive his glory and his descent into hell, very pleasant hell next to the inexpressible in which the Kurtz blows will take him back. “The synopsis speaks volumes at the angle that the film will deal with … This is the story of a Jew of Arab origin (and not Tunisian) having experienced an carefree youth in Tunis.
However, Victor Perez was more than a Jew who lived his youth in Tunis. Victor was the boxer who won the world championship in 1931, welcomed on his return by thousands of Tunisians to La Goulette of a conqueror, received by Le Bey, decorated with “Nichen Iftikhar”, the highest decoration of Tunisia under French colonization.
Victor Perez was the name that was also given to the small stadium which, later on the occasion of the 1967 Olympic Games, disappeared to let the Olympic stadium of El Menzah build.
However, on October 7, 1997, at the National Institute of Sport and Physical Education, located on avenue du Tremblay in the 12th arrondissement of Paris, a commemorative plaque was affixed in the boxing room, baptized from then on the Young-Prez:
“In memory of Young (Victor) Perez, great French sportsman,
world champion weight flies in 1931
At the age of twenty, victim of racial laws of the Vichy government,
Jew deported on October 7, 1943 in Auschwitz, murdered by the Nazis on January 22, 1945 ”
It is falsely presented as a French boxer … Who is the fault?
Certainly to a homeland who forgets her children. Has a homeland without memory.
Will we want to deny unemployed children, “loosers”, eaten by fish, killed by the harraga, when she forgets a “pride”?
No, certainly not!
Hazar Abidi
