Sitting in his boxer shorts near Amsterdam, former Dutch champion Barry Grontman recalls the time when he visited his grandmother as a youngster.
While she was living in a nursing home and he went to visit her, he would often meet an elderly man "who was always boxing empty: in the corridor, with the sisters".
Grontman continues: "He showed me his ring, with the Star of David on it. And my grandmother whispered to me, 'That's Ben Bril.'"
For young Grontman, it was an introduction to a man who would have a huge impact on him and whose story he needed to tell.
Like him, Bril grew up as a Jewish boy in Amsterdam and - also like him - boxing became everything in his life.
But that's where all the comparisons end.
Grontman was born in 1986.
Bril was born in 1912.
By the time he turned 30, his life had already been transformed by invasion, violence and anti-Semitism.
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In October 2022, the Dutch boxing world gathered to celebrate the return of the Ben Bril Commemorative Evening in Amsterdam's famous Kare Theatre.
Those gathered recalled how the multiple national champion was first forced to hide, and then how he was sent to the Nazi concentration camps by a former colleague from the Olympic team.
They recalled his incredible survival and reflected on his legacy today - inside and outside the ring.
Brill grew up in one of the poorest parts of Amsterdam as the second youngest of seven children.
It was a very difficult upbringing, according to Steven Rosenfeld, who is related to Brill through his wife, Celia, and wrote a book about his life. Dancing to survive (Dance with a stick).
"They lived in dilapidated buildings, he didn't sleep on a bed, he slept on straw, they didn't have a toilet, he had to carry buckets down the street," says Rozenfeld.
For young Bril, fighting was part of everyday life.
There was bickering with friends, of course, but also conflict with rival groups from different communities in the overcrowded city, according to Ben Breiber, a historian who wrote extensively about Jewish life in Amsterdam in the interwar years.
But while some of his friends continued to participate in street fights, Brill turned to sports.
"Boxing was very popular in the Jewish quarter before World War II," says Breiber.
"For some of the guys, it was a harsh bookie bookie, but some other young Jews were joining clubs. Those clubs were popular because of the training, and the matches represented an escape from everyday life, but also from everyday poverty.
"Those young people also built self-confidence in this way, because the art of self-defense requires courage, endurance, quick reactions, but also technique."
Brill was one of those young men, and his career was launched when - aged just 15 - he was selected to compete for the Netherlands at the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics.
He turned 16 on the opening day of the Olympics (there are some indications that he had to falsify his date of birth to qualify and was actually only 15 at the time) and reached the quarter-finals in his flyweight class.
When he was older, Bril found a job in a butcher's shop and used his new job to advance in sports.
"He told me that when he cut meat, he always used his left hand, even though he was naturally right-handed, to strengthen his left," Braiber recalled.
Rosenfeld remembers Ben's "fists like bricks," strengthened, he was told, by dipping them in pickles.
From the end of the twenties and throughout the thirties, Bril was a multiple champion, winning eight Dutch titles and gaining fame throughout the country.
But life in Amsterdam would change drastically during those years - especially for Jews like him.
The economic crisis, the rise of Nazi Germany and the associated rise of anti-Semitism in the Netherlands made discrimination against Jews more and more prevalent.
Brill experienced this firsthand when, despite his success at home, he was left out of the Dutch team for the 1932 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.
At the time, Rosenfeld says, he was not fully aware of what had happened there, but later it became clear that he had been blacklisted by anti-Semites from the Dutch National Boxing Committee.
Nevertheless, three years later, in 1935, Brill managed to win what had always been his personal greatest achievement - and the source of that Star of David ring he wore even as an old man.
He traveled to Tel Aviv, in what was then the British Mandate of Palestine, to participate in the second edition of the Maccabiah for Jewish athletes from around the world.
He and a fellow Dutch Jew, his friend Api De Vree, won gold medals and were greeted as heroes by the Jewish community in Amsterdam upon their return.
Sometime around this time Brill began wearing the Star of David on his shorts, paired with the ring he won.
It is a kind of tradition among Jewish boxers to wear the Star in that way, and Brill was certainly not the first to do so.
The great American lightweight boxer from the 1920s, Benny Leonard, known as the "Ghetto Wizard", did the same thing in his time.
And, much later, as he built his career, Barry Grontman would pay tribute to the man who inspired him by wearing a Star of David in the ring himself.
For Breiber, however, Brill's act of identifying in this way in Holland in the thirties "was very significant."
"Obviously he identified himself as Jewish, but he wanted others to see him that way - that was important to him," he says.
Until 1939, Brill was still wearing the Star in the ring, and was handing out signed publicity photos of himself wearing the shorts.
Rosenfeld, who also interviewed Brill at length for his book, says Brill's main motivation for wearing the Star was "an expression of his sporting achievements" by winning the Maccabiah, rather than a political stance.
But he was clearly aware of the wider situation in Europe and was not afraid to do what he wanted.
In 1934, Brill traveled with a group of Dutch Jews to a competition in Germany.
The Nazis were in power there for a year.
The state has already begun official discrimination against Jews.
The atmosphere was hostile and everyday life was extremely difficult.
Bril was amazed by what he saw.
"Everywhere we saw brown uniforms, swastika flags, the word 'Jew' written on people's shops," Brill told a Dutch newspaper many years later.
"I said then, as long as that regime is in power, I will never go to Germany again."
Despite being hurt by being left out of the team for Los Angeles four years earlier, when the Dutch champion received an invitation to travel to Berlin for the Olympics in 1936, he declined.
While his amateur career progressed and his fame grew, Bril married his wife Silia.
They had a son - Abraham - and opened a sandwich shop in Utrecht.
But their lives, like everyone else's in the country, were turned upside down by the outbreak of war in Europe in 1939.
In May 1940, Germany invaded the Netherlands.
Little changed at first, but gradually life for Dutch Jews became more restricted and increasingly threatened.
"In 1941, stricter rules were introduced as an obvious attempt to segregate Jews from the rest of the population in the Netherlands," says historian Breiber.
There were restrictions on which public spaces Jews were allowed to enter, and special pressure was put on bars and cafes to ban Jews from entering, which often ended in violence.
This led to the establishment of a large number of Jewish defense groups, some based around sports clubs such as the one Brill was a member of.
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On February 1941, XNUMX, Dutch Nazis marched into the Jewish quarter of Amsterdam.
A previous raid two days earlier ended with attacks on Jewish homes and businesses, and there were fears, Breiber says, that synagogues would be the next targets.
And so the defenders - armed with bricks, metal rods, anything they could get their hands on - prepared for another confrontation.
This time it was even more violent and bloody, "a brutal battle," says Breiber, which ended in the death of at least one Nazi and led to repercussions against the Jewish community.
Within two weeks, 400 men were arrested and deported - many of them did not live more than a few months.
Although Brayber was told by a friend of Brill's that Brill was involved in all of this - and many men he knew certainly were, including his trainer and many of his fellow boxers - it is unlikely that the champion was directly involved in the fights.
Rosenfeld says Brill was told to stay out of the crowd because his fame could make him an easy target.
But the brief standoff in Amsterdam's Waterlooplein square, centered on Jewish fighting groups — "a form of Jewish resistance unique in Europe," says Breiber — was a stark indication of how much life in the city had changed.
Intimidation, violence and official discrimination continued to intensify in the months that followed and in July 1942 - shortly after the wearing of the yellow star became compulsory - the first deportations of Dutch Jews took place.
"At that time, literally nobody in the Netherlands knew for sure what was going on in those camps where the Jews were being sent," says Breiber.
"What we know today about gas chambers and extermination camps only became apparent after the war. However, some 20 percent of people called for deportation did not show up and started hiding."
Bril and his family also belonged to that group.
As Brejber points out, the decision to go into hiding was a dangerous one: "'Can we stay together, can we get help, can these people be trusted?' All that had to be thought about."
According to Rosenfeld, the Brills were hidden in various places and - despite the danger - often came out.
But in the end, they were betrayed and taken into custody - in a bitter parallel with Bril's sports life - by Sam Olij, Bril's colleague in the 1928 Olympic boxing team.
Bril also boxed with Olij's sons in Amsterdam, but the Olij family became staunch Nazis.
According to Dutch sports historian Jurit Van Der Voren, Brill and his wife and son were arrested by Ollie's son Jan.
The Brill family was sent to the camps.
First in Vugt in the Netherlands, and then - on the German border in the north - in Westerbork, and finally in Bergen-Beslen, where it is estimated that 50.000 people died, including Anne Frank.
De Voren describes Oli as a "notorious Jew hunter" who "committed the worst kind of betrayal in Dutch sport".
After the war, he served a nine-year prison sentence and died in 1975, while his son Jan is said to have fled to Argentina.
There is one moment that stands out from all the others in Bril's wartime life.
It was a moment filled with danger, but one in which he acted instinctively.
It happened in the Nazi concentration camp in Vugt, and we know about it based on Brill's own words, because he told this story to Breiber in the eighties.
"One boy tried to run away, but they caught him," Bril said.
"They tied him to the crucifix and he was supposed to receive 25 lashes. Suddenly, the commander shouted: 'Boxer - step out!'
"I was supposed to carry out the punishment, but I refused. The commander said that if I didn't do that I would get 50 lashes, so I took the whip, but when I hit him, I aimed to hit him too high.
"The commander got angry: 'Not like that!', he shouted. He grabbed my whip and started hitting like crazy. I'm back in my line."
Why Brill suffered no consequences for refusing to carry out the order is not known, but those who witnessed it have no doubt what they saw.
"Ben Brill was the only man I saw in two and a half years in the concentration camps - or heard of - who risked not carrying out a formal SS order," Breiber quotes the head of the Jewish administration in Vugt as saying during post-war testimony.
It was, says the historian, "a very brave act".
But Bril also had to box in the camps, both in Vugt and Vesterbork.
As a famous boxer, he was a target - someone the guards wanted to see in action.
On Dutch television in 1988, Brill recounted one of his life-changing moments.
"I boxed for my son, who was dying," he says.
He was supposed to fight against a 'kapo' (a camp inmate appointed by the Nazis to guard and control other prisoners) in Vugt.
The man begged that Bril would not knock him out.
He replied that he would grant his wish on the condition that the man helps him get the medicine and that he no longer beats the prisoners in the block.
Steven Rosenfeld says the man agreed and Brill's son was able to heal.
Brill also helped organize matches for the amusement of the camp authorities.
Those who participated received extra portions of food or other benefits, according to Brayber.
Grontman made a compelling television show about Brill's life story and recalls how a former prisoner showed him papers detailing some boxing matches at the Westerbork camp.
"I saw a lot of names I know, I know their grandchildren," he says.
"The scariest thing of all was that those schedules were very similar to the programs hanging in the locker rooms today, when I go to amateur nights with my friends. That was difficult."
Almost all of Brill's extended family died in the Holocaust, but his son Abraham and his wife Cilia survived the war with him.
In January 1945, the Bergen-Belsen family was included in a prisoner exchange, after which they were transferred first to Switzerland and then to a United Nations camp in Algeria, before making it back to Utrecht.
Bril did not return to the ring as a boxer after the war, but he could not leave boxing.
He became a senior official in the sport, working as a referee in and out of the ring in matches around the world, until the 1970s.
He went to the Olympics in Tokyo in 1964 (where he once again showed his character by jumping into the ring to protect a fellow judge who had been hit by a competitor), Mexico City in 1968 and Montreal in 1976.
He missed the 1972 Munich Olympics and their own tragic story, only because of a falling out with the boxing authorities in Holland.
Ringside or in it, he played a small role in the early careers of some true greats, refereeing the matches of world champions such as Joe Frazier, George Foreman and Sugar Ray Leonard.
Bril died in 2003 at the age of 91.
The first commemorative night in his honor was held four years later.
Grontman first performed in Kare at the 2011 event.
He fought with a Star of David on his shorts, in honor of his own family as well as the man who inspired him as a young man.
"I think I boxed the best match of my entire career that night," he says.
"People draw strength from their faith, from meditation, from mindfulness, from their own background. I've always felt that while boxing for Zvezda on shorts, it gives me more strength."
"They raised us with the attitude: 'Never forget where you came from.' Ben Brill has always stood behind who he is."
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