Irving Trasch was the greatest of the Auschwitz pit fighters. Commandant Hoess made big wads of marks betting on him - although, to be honest, this was a much easier proposition in view of the fact that all of Trasch's opponents were fiendishly starved to skin and bone. These were battles of Davids against Goliaths, and there was no boxing commission or protective regulatory apparatus in the inferno of the pugilistic death machine of Auschwitz. Then Irma Grese got tired of constantly losing her wagers and proposed to Hoess that he pit his man against one of her Nazi hell hounds, which, as any student of Holocaust lore knows, had been trained to rape, ravage, maul, and urinate on any Jew at first sight. Hoess agreed to hold such a bout, but only because he had an inside angle. One of Grese's dog trainers was bribed by Hoess to poison Pootschi, the bone-gnawing bruiser who was to challenge Trasch. Alas, when Pootschi met Trasch in the pit, its stomach had been so corroded by acid that it was unable even to wag its tail, let alone bite off Trasch's throat. And so the muscleman had his way with the mutt and kicked its head into the crowd of onlookers, who promptly pounced upon it and devoured it, fur, skull, and all in their terrible hunger.
