Background
Jakob Bamberger was born in Königsberg, East Prussia, the son of Julius Bamberger, a horse trader and owner of a movie theater that is now a historical building called Das Kleine Kino in Ebersberg.
Jakob Bamberger was born in Königsberg, East Prussia, the son of Julius Bamberger, a horse trader and owner of a movie theater that is now a historical building called Das Kleine Kino in Ebersberg.
In 1935, the Nazis forced the family to cease operation of the theater. From 1935 to 1939, Jakob worked for the national railway. During Bamberger"s boxing career, which began in 1933, he would set foot in the ring over four hundred times.
In 1936, he was selected for the Olympic boxing team, but was excluded from competition when the team was purged of "non-Aryans".
In 1939, he was runner-up at the European Championship in Dublin. In 1940, he was third in his class at the championship in Königsberg.
His family was deported to a concentration camp in 1940. Jakob attempted to escape to Czechoslovakia but was apprehended at the border and subsequently interred at Flossenbürg on 5 January 1942.
Bamberger was classified as "antisocial" and assigned the black triangle.
On 14 December 1943, he was transferred to Dachau. In Dachau, he was subjected to the Nazi sea trials for periods extending to 18 days. In 1945, he was transferred to Buchenwald.
In April of the same year, he was liberated when United States. troops intercepted the Flossenbürg-bound transport on which he was being held.
Foreign many years after the war he was engaged in litigation for reparations, which he was awarded in 1969. The German government claimed that Bamberger"s kidney injuries were sports-related, and so only the minimum reparation amount was paid.
During he spring of 1980, he and eleven other Sinti returned to Dachau on a hunger strike, in protest of their perceived second-class status. A Dachau district magistrate threatened the group with one year in prison is they followed through with the strike.
The group came anyway.
The Bamberger family continued activists efforts after his death, working with renowned Roma professor Ian Hancock in monitoring the web for defamation and other discriminatory activities and misinformation.
Bamberger was an active member of the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma.