The story of a gypsy boxer who defied Hitler…

This novel told in ten rounds is inspired by the life Johann Trollmann, nicknamed “Rukeli”, a boxer with gypsy origins who lived in Nazi Germany and was assassinated on February 9, 1943 in the Neuengamme concentration camp.

Born in Hanover in 1907, Trollman became the middle-weight champion of Germany in 1928. Throughout the Weimar Republic he was known as Der tanzende Zigeuner, the dancing gypsy because of the incomparable way he moved around the ring. Boxers were supposed to stand still and punch; Rukeli did so much more. In 1931, he becomes a professional boxer racking up one win after the next.

In 1932, his coach asked him to follow him to the US to flee the Nazis but Rukeli chose to stay. The Nazi sports paper Box-Sport criticized his style saying that it was supposedly characteristic of the “gypsy unpredictability” and they call him the Gyspy claiming that “his punches are not German”. Out of defiance, Rukeli had this name sown onto his boxing shorts.

Things get really complicated for him when Hitler rose to power in 1933. Gypsy was stripped of his title and forced to try to win it back. In this historical match, he decided to stand still and took punch after punch until he was knocked out.

Charles Aubert worked for an insurance company before deciding to change his life, live the big city and settle south of Montepllier with his family. His first novel, and the first book in a crime trilogy, Bleu Calypso was published by Éditions Slatkine & Cie in 2019, followed in 2020 by Rouge Tango and in 2021 Vert Samba.