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I. ORDYNACKA 1: THE HOUSE WHERE THE ARENA WAS FLOODED

The building stood at Ordynacka 1, on the corner of Okólnik 2, and was the largest indoor entertainment venue in pre-war Warsaw. It was erected in 1883 according to Wincenty Rakiewicz's design for one hundred and eighty thousand rubles: four floors, an auditorium for three thousand seats, velvet-upholstered boxes on the ground floor, dressing rooms, and prop storage. The arena was thirteen meters in diameter and had a structure that allowed it to be filled with water. The owners changed every generation: Wilhelmina Ciniselli from 1883, her grandson Alessandro from 1895, Stanisław Mroczkowski from 1914, and from 1929 the Staniewski brothers.

Under the Staniewski brothers, the hall had long ceased to be just a circus – it was a calendar machine for drawing audiences. In 1931, wrestlers were shown there, in May 1933 a dance marathon was held from the third to the twenty-second, until the authorities interrupted it. In February 1935, the IKP Łódź – Maccabi Berlin match was boxed there. In March 1938, cyclists rode there, in March 1939, acrobats on bicycles. Boxing came under this roof much earlier: on October 16, 1926, Wiktor Junosza-Dąbrowski lost in the circus by knockout to Dudley Harris – a week earlier he himself had knocked out the same Englishman at Dynasy.

It is worth correcting something that is also repeated in the title of this chapter. The Mirowskie Halls were market halls before the war, not an arena for boxing tournaments. The ring was set up in Mirowski Square only after the war – we will return to this at the end. There is also no basis to write about radio broadcasts from Ordynacka. The legend of this place does not need prosthetics.

II. THE ASSOCIATION, THE DISTRICT, AND NINETEEN CLUBS

The scene doesn't come out of thin air, but from records. The PZB was founded on December 2, 1923, in 1925 it was admitted to the international amateur federation FIBA, and by the end of 1936 it had one hundred and forty-five clubs, sixty-three of which had voting rights at the general assembly. The country was divided into districts, and they, not the national team, were the fabric of this sport. The strongest were: Poznań, Warsaw, Silesia, and Łódź, alongside Lwów. The Łódź district was established in February 1926.

In Warsaw, it started with teachers and a course. Stanisław Budny and Stanisław Szczepkowski taught boxing in Warsaw schools even before Poland regained independence, and in 1920–1921 the YMCA organized a several-month instructor course led by George Burford. By 1924, AZS, Cestes, Friendly Boxing Club, a section at the Polish Athletic Association, and a club called Knockout were already operating. On March 12 and 13, 1927, the tournament "Stadjon's First Boxing Step" was held – the first of its kind in the history of Polish boxing, with seventy-two competitors participating. In 1939, the Warsaw district comprised nineteen clubs and about four hundred boxers.

This map explains where the athlete came from. The WKS Legia boxing section was founded in 1926, with Sergeant Karwuś as the first instructor. Antoni Kolczyński, a newsboy from Grochów, trained at the Warsaw YMCA under Paweł Monasterski before he represented Fort Bema and Syrena. Antoni Czortek boxed for Skoda Warsaw from 1936, later renamed Okęcie. Mieczysław Całka came from RKS Elektryczność and CWS, Eugeniusz Cendrowski from YMCA and the factory club at Fort Bema to Polonia. The first Polish champion from Warsaw was Walery "Walter" Karpiński in 1932.

The second pillar of the capital's ring was Jewish, and today almost exclusively paper remains of it. Maccabi Warsaw was founded in 1915; the club had nearly two thousand members, ran almost twenty sections, including a boxing one, and in 1929 received a three-hectare plot for a sports field at Zieleniecka Street. The workers' Gwiazda – in Yiddish Sztern – had president Natan Tytelman and the best flyweight in the country. The Bundist Jutrznia, under the presidency of Maurycy Orzech, reached up to one and a half thousand members.

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III. PEOPLE WITH A RECORD

• Henryk Chmielewski (born January 8, 1914, Łódź) – factory IKP boxer, three-time Polish champion (1931, 1933, 1936), fourth at the Berlin Olympics in 1936 after a hand injury. Gold at the European Championships in Milan in May 1937. Professional from June 1938: 82 fights, 56 wins, 2 draws, 24 losses. Concluded his career in September 1951.
• Antoni "Kolka" Kolczyński (born August 25, 1917, Zdunowo in Płońsk County; died June 19, 1964 in Warsaw) – 174 centimeters, welterweight. Polish runner-up 1937, national team debut in December 1937 against Norway, in April 1939 European champion in Dublin after the final with Erik Ågren. In 1938 recognized as the best player in the European national team match against the USA and chosen as the second athlete of the country in a plebiscite.
• Antoni Czortek (born July 2, 1915; died January 15, 2004 in Radom) – from 1936 with Skoda Warsaw, later Okęcie. Won his first Polish championship title as a nineteen-year-old in 1934 in Poznań, subsequent ones in 1938 and 1939. In Dublin 1939, silver in featherweight. International record: 23 fights, 18 wins, 4 losses, 1 draw.
• Szapsel Rotholc (born July 2, 1913 in Warsaw) – flyweight, Gwiazda Warsaw boxer from 1929–1939. Polish champion 1933, European Championship bronze in Budapest in 1934. Fought 124 bouts and lost nine; in international matches, he had fifteen wins, one draw, and no losses. Ranked tenth in the "Przegląd Sportowy" poll in 1934 and sixth in 1935.
• Franciszek Szymura (born December 7, 1912 in Dortmund; died May 18, 1985 in Warsaw) – light heavyweight, two-time European vice-champion: Milan 1937 and Dublin 1939. Lost both finals to Italian Luigi Musina.
• Tadeusz "Teddy" Pietrzykowski (born April 8, 1917 in Warsaw) – from the age of sixteen in WKS Legia, bantamweight, student of Feliks Stamm, Polish vice-champion and Warsaw champion. In 1940, he was sent to Auschwitz with camp number 77. He fought about sixty fights organized by the Germans in the camps.

IV. THE GLOVE: SHELL, HORSEHAIR, LACE

The glove of that era did not have foam, because foam did not yet exist. A leather shell, filled with horsehair, fastened by lacing on the inside of the wrist. This single detail organizes the rest: a lace-up glove cannot be put on alone, so a second had to be present for every ring entry. Horsehair also has a feature that no modern material possesses – it compacts and hardens with use. The equipment of that era aged towards hardness, not towards comfort.

• Weight in ounces. An ounce is 28.4 grams. FIBA, which PZB joined in 1925, standardized the rules around an eight-ounce glove – about 230 grams per hand. Heavier variants, ten and twelve ounces (280 and 340 grams), are a different fight.
• Filling. Horsehair – more durable than modern foam, but less protective.
• Lacing and thumb. Fastening on the inside of the wrist, tight and repeatable. To this day, regulations require the glove to be laced and have a sewn-in thumb, and both fighters must wear identical models.
• Bandage underneath. It's not the glove that protects the metacarpus, but the wrapping. The bandage stabilizes the wrist, metacarpus, and the base of the thumb, and it limits fractures of the fourth and fifth metacarpal bones – an injury that medicine still calls a boxer's fracture. In competitions, gauze and tape were used.
• Shoe. High, laced above the ankle, with a thin leather sole. Ankle stabilization weighed more than cushioning, because footwork involved short, sharp changes of direction on hardboards, not running.

This is more evident in the photos than in the description. In Kolczyński's 1939 photograph, wearing the colors of Syrena, his hands are wrapped in bandages and only bandages – the glove is the last element to be added, and the first to be removed.

What was not in this set says as much as what was. A protective headgear was introduced to amateur boxing only in 1982 and was withdrawn from men's competition in March 2016 – for two decades, the head remained uncovered. The only barrier between a punch and the skull was a shell of horsehair, the same material that became harder with each fight. Hand protection was provided by the bandage, rhythm by the gong, and the fighter's safety depended on one person: the referee standing with them in the ring.

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V. THE RING, THE CORNER, AND THE WEIGHT

The word "ring" is a relic from times when fights took place within a circle drawn on the ground. The square with ropes was introduced in 1741 by Jack Broughton, and the first formalized square ring – twenty-four feet, or 7.3 meters per side, surrounded by two ropes – was described in 1838. The Marquess of Queensberry rules added three things that still organize this discipline today: three-minute rounds, mandatory gloves, and weight categories.

• Side. From sixteen to twenty-four feet between the ropes, or 4.9 to 7.3 meters, plus about sixty centimeters of apron outside.
• Floor. A platform one meter above the ground, planks, on the planks about twenty-five millimeters of soft padding, and stretched canvas on top. Two and a half centimeters – that's all that separated the skull from the wood.
• Ropes. Approximately twenty-five millimeters in diameter, suspended at heights of 46, 76, 107, and 137 centimeters above the mat, posts about one and a half meters above it. A rope is not a fence, but a spring that sends the fighter back into the punches.
• Corner. Red is for the higher-ranked or home fighter, blue for the opponent. This is not an embellishment, but information for the protocol.
• Weight. In the late 1930s, there were eight categories, measured in kilograms converted from pounds: flyweight up to 50.8; bantamweight up to 53.5; featherweight up to 57.1; lightweight up to 61.2; welterweight up to 66.7; middleweight up to 72.6; light heavyweight up to 79.4; and heavyweight above. These divisions encompass the entire Polish medal table of that decade.

Who won was decided by the protocol, not the audience. One referee – an arbiter – worked in the ring, overseeing the rules, stopping fights, issuing warnings, and counting to ten; the verdict belonged to the judges sitting ringside, and the winner was the one who had the majority of their scorecards. A fight ended by knockout when the fallen boxer failed to get up by the count of ten. That this was not a mere formality is shown by October 1934: the match won by Poland against Czechoslovakia in Warsaw, 11:5, was annulled due to refereeing errors.

The second protocol of the evening was the weigh-in. The category was checked on the scales before the start, and in 1936, at the Berlin Olympics, a change in rules mandated that boxers be weighed before each subsequent fight, not just at the beginning of the tournament. The difference is practical: with one weigh-in, one can make the limit once and fight heavier for the rest of the competition; with a weigh-in before each fight, the limit applies throughout the entire tournament. This is how the entire mechanics of the evening unfolded, broken down by roles:

• Ring referee. The only official inside the ropes. Breaks clinches, issues warnings, stops the fight, and conducts the ten-count. In amateur boxing, they do not submit a scorecard.
• Judges. Sit ringside, on the sides of the square, and score independently. The decision is made by a majority of cards, not by unanimous agreement.
• Second. The person in the corner: laces gloves before going out, works during the minute break, removes equipment after the fight. Without them, the boxer cannot even get dressed.
• Gong and timer. A three-minute round and a one-minute break are a legacy of the Marquess of Queensberry Rules – the same structure that dictates the rhythm of the entire evening.
• Weight. Eight categories, limit to the decagram. From Berlin 1936, checked before every fight of the tournament.

Added to this was the economics of the evening, because the gala was first and foremost a business. The price list of the first formalized professional gala in Poland, held on January 19, 1931, in Królewska Huta by the Polish Professional Boxing Association, has been preserved: five fights on the program, a box for four zlotys, first-row seats for three fifty, second-row for two fifty, and a ticket for the unemployed for one zloty. This last item says more about the country than the entire sports protocol.

The press, which was just learning the discipline, wrote the reports. "Przegląd Sportowy" was founded on May 21, 1921, in Krakow, in 1925 the editorial office moved to Warsaw, and from 1926 the magazine conducted an annual poll for the best athlete in the country, in which boxers regularly entered the top ten. The first Polish note about boxing competitions was printed by Łódź's "Rozwój" on June 1, 1920, in issue 150, under the heading "unseen sports spectacle to date."

VI. MATCHES THAT HAVE A HISTORY

Polish boxing entered the international ring hard and unevenly, measured by the scoring of eight-bout matches. in 1928, in the Poznań Trade Fair Hall, Poland defeated Austria 10:6 before three thousand spectators; the team was guest-coached by German Otto Nispel. In November 1931, Germany fell by the same score in Poznań – six thousand people in the stands. A year later came a lesson in humility: in Dortmund's Westfalenhalle, before ten thousand spectators, the Poles lost 2:14.

Interstate matches had a fixed architecture and simple arithmetic. Eight fights, one in each weight category, two points for a victory – which is why every score from those years adds up to sixteen: 10:6, 15:1, 9:7, 13:3, 2:14. The same formula governed inter-city encounters, such as Łódź – Breslau 9:7 in February 1934. The squad was assembled earlier in a training camp; before the match against Germany in September 1935, the camp was led by Lt. Kazimierz Laskowski and trained by Feliks Stamm. The PZB regulations themselves were adapted to FIBA rules in 1926, and at that time the country was also divided into districts – without this network, there would have been no one to field in eight weight classes at once.

The audience was described by the press, and these descriptions have been preserved better than tickets. Regarding the match against Austria in Poznań in 1928, "Stadjon" wrote that the organization of the competition was good, and the audience "behaved extremely politely"; whistles due to a five-minute delay were considered entirely unjustified. Competitions were sometimes preceded by a lecture explaining the rules of the fight – the discipline was new and the spectator learned it together with the journalist. In November 1931, with six thousand people in the Poznań Trade Fair hall, German fans bought up three rows of the most expensive category on the first day of sales, and a crowd stood outside the building waiting for the result. A year later in Dortmund, the hosts organized special bus trips for their supporters. After the match in Warsaw in September 1935, "Przegląd Sportowy" summarized it with a sentence that says more about the atmosphere of those evenings than the protocol: "In one respect, the Poles decidedly surpassed the Germans: fair play and complete gentlemanliness."

• 1934, February 4 – Łódź – Breslau 9:7. An inter-city match with Wrocław, won by one fight. This was the daily bread of the discipline: not championships, but eight-on-eight, city against city.
• 1934, April – Budapest, European Championships. Five Polish medals: silvers for Witold Majchrzycki and Roman Antczak, bronzes for Mieczysław Forlański, Szapsel Rotholc, and Tadeusz Rogalski. In the same season, Poznań beat Germany 12:4.
• 1935, September 1 – Polish Army Stadium, Warsaw. Poland lost to Germany 6:10 in front of an audience estimated at up to twenty-five thousand people. The largest boxing crowd in pre-war Warsaw – and in the open air, as no capital city hall could accommodate such a number.
• 1937, May 5–9 – Milan, European Championships. Sixteen countries. Gold for Aleksander Polus and Henryk Chmielewski, silver for Edmund Sobkowiak, bronze for Franciszek Szymura – and the team European Championship for Poland. On February 21 of that year, Poland crushed Austria in Łódź 15:1.
• 1938, February – Poznań: Poland – Germany 10:6. The score for Dortmund was settled after six years.
• 1939, April 18–22 – Dublin, European Championships. Twelve countries, five Polish medals, third place in the table. Gold for Kolczyński in the welterweight category, silvers for Czortek and Szymura, medals for Zbigniew Kowalski and Józef Pisarski.

Four and a half months after Dublin, the war began. That is the true measure of that success: the national team was at its best exactly in the season that proved to be its last.

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VII. SEPTEMBER, OCCUPATION AND THE SECOND RING

The building at Ordynacka 1 ceased to exist in September 1939, destroyed during the defense of Warsaw, and was never rebuilt. During the occupation, the Staniewski family ran a makeshift summer circus at the intersection of Krucza and Mokotowska streets. On the former plot, between 1960 and 1966, the building of today's Fryderyk Chopin University of Music was erected – at an address where for half a century the arena was flooded with water, today scales are practiced.

The boxers went where everyone else went. Antoni Czortek fought in the September Campaign near Wieluń, hid in Warsaw as Antoni Kamiński, was shot in the leg and identified; he was sent to Auschwitz with number 139559 and forced by SS men to participate in about fifteen fights, including one against a German guard. In 1944, he was transferred to Mauthausen-Gusen, liberated by Americans in the spring of 1945. Kolczyński was taken to a German camp after the Warsaw Uprising. Szapsel Rotholc survived the Warsaw Ghetto as a Jewish policeman, lived in Łódź until 1949 after the war, then left for Canada. Most of the other athletes from Makabi, Gwiazda, and Jutrznia died in the ghetto.

Three Warsaw boxers died in the Warsaw Uprising, and each has a date. Mieczysław "Miecio" Całka, born 1917, lightweight for RKS Elektryczność and CWS, cadet officer in Lieutenant Stefan Berent's "Chwaty" unit – fell on September 13, 1944, in a fight for a tenement house in the Frascati and Konopnicka area. Eugeniusz "Neger" Cendrowski, born 1909, instructor and coach, wounded in the abdomen in February 1944 during a diversionary action and saved by blood donated by comrades from the ring – on September 18, 1944, he was shot in the back of the head by an SS man during an evacuation march when he asked for a slower pace for the wounded. Henryk "Docha" Doroba, born 1915, Legia boxer, multiple Warsaw champion and leading lightweight in the country in 1937, commander of a two-hundred-person unit – wounded on September 30, 1944, died in a hospital in Tworki. He was treated by a German soldier who recognized him as a pre-war rival.

Boxing returned faster than the city. The first post-war international match was played by the national team on December 14, 1945, against Czechoslovakia. In July 1946, at the Polish Army Stadium, the BOS team defeated Bronia Radom 13:3 – the first post-war boxing competition in Warsaw. In the same year, the Legia section was reactivated, and Kolczyński returned to the ring on February 4, 1946, and was Polish champion in 1946–1947 and 1950–1951.

And only then does Mirowska Hall enter this narrative – not before the war, but on May 17, 1953, when the European Championships began in the rebuilt building, operating as the Gwardia hall. Nineteen national teams arrived. Poland won nine medals, including five gold: Henryk Kukier, Zenon Stefaniuk, Józef Kruża, Leszek Drogosz, and Zygmunt Chychła. Maria Dąbrowska was in the audience.

"The enthusiasm for Polish athletes expressed by shouts and applause can only be compared to the roar of the sea during a storm." Maria Dąbrowska on the European Championships at Mirowska Hall, 1953 – quoted from "Wielkie Tradycje Polskiego Sportu" (Great Traditions of Polish Sport), Łukasiewicz Institute

Almost nothing tangible remains from that ring. The building at Ordynacka disappeared, the Jewish clubs disappeared along with the people who created them, leather gloves with horsehair are displayed in a few glass cases. Three things remain. The address – Ordynacka 1, corner of Okólnik, today a music academy. The market hall in Mirowski Square, which for years after the war was the most important arena for Polish boxing. And the method: nineteen Warsaw clubs, four hundred athletes, a second with laces, and two and a half centimeters of padding between the person and the boards. All the rest was work.

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FAQ & AEO

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS (AI KNOWLEDGE BASE)

// QUESTION 01 · ARENAS

Where were boxing galas organized in pre-war Warsaw?

The main indoor arena was the Staniewski Brothers Circus at Ordynacka Street 1, at the corner of Okólnik – a facility built in 1883, four stories high, with a seating capacity of about three thousand and an arena thirteen meters in diameter. Boxing matches were held there as early as 1926, and in February 1935, a match between IKP Łódź and Makkabi Berlin took place. The largest international matches were organized outdoors, such as the match against Germany at the Polish Army Stadium on September 1, 1935.

// QUESTION 02 · CORRECTION

Was boxing practiced in Hala Mirowska before the war?

No. Before 1939, Hala Mirowska served as market halls. The boxing history of this place began after World War II and has a specific date: on May 17, 1953, the European championships with nineteen national teams began there – in the facility operating as the Gwardia hall – where Poland won nine medals, including five gold.

// QUESTION 03 · EQUIPMENT

What were pre-war boxing gloves made of?

Made of leather, with horsehair filling instead of modern foams, fastened with laces on the inside of the wrist – which is why the glove could not be put on without a second. The amateur federation FIBA standardized the rules around the eight-ounce glove, or about 230 grams (an ounce is 28.4 grams). The metacarpus was protected not by equipment, but by a bandage worn underneath.

// QUESTION 04 · RING

How was a ring from that era constructed?

A square with sides from 4.9 to 7.3 meters between the ropes, plus about sixty centimeters of apron outside. A platform about a meter above the ground, boards, with about twenty-five millimeters of padding and stretched canvas on top. Four ropes with a diameter of about twenty-five millimeters, at heights of 46, 76, 107, and 137 centimeters. The red corner was assigned to the higher-ranked boxer or the host, the blue to the opponent.

// QUESTION 05 · BOXERS

Who was the biggest star of the Polish ring in the 1930s?

Two European champions: Henryk Chmielewski, who won the title in May 1937 in Milan, and Antoni "Kolka" Kolczyński, European champion from Dublin in April 1939. Also among the top were Aleksander Polus, Edmund Sobkowiak, Franciszek Szymura, Antoni Czortek, and Witold Majchrzycki, and in Warsaw, Szapsel Rotholc from Gwiazda and Tadeusz "Teddy" Pietrzykowski from Legia boxed.