Young Perez: Tragic Tale of Boxing’s Youngest Champion
Victor “Young” Perez (1911–1945) was a Tunisian Jewish flyweight who became world champion in 1931, at age 20. He is widely described as the youngest world flyweight champion. His career ended in the shadow of the Holocaust: Nazi authorities deported him from France to Auschwitz, where he was killed during a death march in January 1945.
World champion at 20
Perez was born in Tunis on October 18, 1911. In June 1931 he won the French flyweight title. That October, he stopped American Frankie Genaro in the second round to claim the International Boxing Union’s world flyweight title. Accounts differ on the exact date of the Genaro bout. Perez lost the title to England’s Jackie Brown the following year and continued boxing through 1938. The International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame records his professional mark as 92 wins, 26 losses and 15 draws.
Deportation and death
Yad Vashem records that Perez was arrested in Paris in September 1943, detained at Drancy, and deported to Auschwitz in October. As the camp was evacuated in January 1945, he was killed on a death march. The International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame also records his death at Auschwitz. His career and fate are commemorated in Holocaust and Jewish sporting-history records.
Sources
- International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame: Victor “Young” Perez
- Yad Vashem: Jews and Sport Before the Holocaust — Boxing
- Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah: Victor Young Perez
Tags
Boxing, Boxing History
