Triumph of the Spirit is a 1989 American film directed by Robert M. Young and starring Willem Dafoe and Edward James Olmos. The majority of the film is set in the death camp at Auschwitz during the Holocaust and details how the Jewish boxer Salamo Arouch was forced to fight other internees to the death for the SS guards' entertainment. Prior to Triumph of the Spirit, no major feature film had ever been shot on location at Auschwitz.
A stevedore i...
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Triumph of the Spirit is a 1989 American film directed by Robert M. Young and starring Willem Dafoe and Edward James Olmos. The majority of the film is set in the death camp at Auschwitz during the Holocaust and details how the Jewish boxer Salamo Arouch was forced to fight other internees to the death for the SS guards' entertainment. Prior to Triumph of the Spirit, no major feature film had ever been shot on location at Auschwitz.
A stevedore in Thessaloniki, Greece, Salamo Arouch's passion is boxing. Captured along with his family and fiance Allegra in 1943 and interned in Auschwitz, Arouch is used by his SS captors as entertainment, forced to box against fellow prisoners. He knows that if he refuses, his family will be punished; if he wins, he will be given extra rations which he can share with them; if he loses, he will be sent to the gas chamber. As his family and friends die around him, he has only his love of Allegra and his grim determination to keep him alive.
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