The Mighty Atom

Martin Luther King famously quipped “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice”. That arc sure does feel like it’s taking its time, but this man temporarily bent it a little narrower — much like he used to bend iron horseshoes with his hands.

This is Joe Greenstein, a bodybuilder, martial artist, and Nazi puncher. Born into a Jewish family in 1893, he was a sickly child. But this 5’4.5″ kid luckily got aquatinted with a Russian strongman who taught him what he knew, and Greenstein proved a more-than-capable student. He immigrated to the U.S. from Poland in the early 20th century, making a living wrestling, selling health elixirs, and demonstrating his crazy strength publicly — he could bite through nails and pull 32-ton trucks, crush steel bars over his body, etc. Known as “the Mighty Atom,” he performed acts to show off his physical prowess until the year before he died from cancer at age 84.

He also crushed Nazis. When he took down a sign saying “no dogs or Jews” that the pro-Nazi German American Bund group had erected, he was attacked by a whole gang of them — and he won, sending 18 Nazis to the hospital. The judge who heard Greenstein’s case declared it self-defense and he was not prosecuted.

“It wasn’t a fight,” the Might Atom said. “It was a pleasure.”