Jewish athletes conquer site of Hitler’s Nazi Games
by Agency Staff,
2015-07-28 05:50:50.0
SEVENTY years after the end of the Second World War, Berlin is hosting the European Maccabi Games, dubbed the Jewish Olympics, at the site of the notorious 1936 "Nazi Games".
"These are the games of reconciliation," Alon Meyer, Maccabi Germany’s president, said of the 10-day event in which 2,300 athletes from 36 countries are competing in 19 disciplines from football to chess.
It is the first time Germany is hosting the Jewish Olympiad, launched in 1929 in Prague for European Jews, followed by the first world games held in 1932 in Tel Aviv in what was then British-mandated Palestine.
To be held under tight security, the 14th European Maccabi Games have "strong historical and political significance", said Chancellor Angela Merkel, who expressed Germany’s "gratitude" for the rebirth of Jewish life in the country responsible for the Holocaust.
After a memorial service yesterday in the former Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin, German President Joachim Gauck will today kick off the games as 15,000 spectators watch at the Waldbüehne, an amphitheatre near the stadium where Adolf Hitler opened the 1936 Summer Olympics.
The main events will take place in the Berlin Olympic Park built for the Nazi-era games, where the exclusion of Jewish athletes, which had been a worsening trend for decades amid a tide of anti-Semitism sweeping Europe, reached its peak.
The ban on Jews in many sports clubs was at the root of the Maccabi movement founded in the late 19th century, said Oren Osterer, a former basketball player and head of the organisation of these games, speaking on RBB public radio.
Inspired by the Zionist movement, Maccabi was born as a quest for the "muscular Jew", said Meyer. He pointed to an egalitarian spirit that values juniors, seniors and veterans, not just top performers. It also includes disciplines far removed from classic Olympic sports.
Besides basketball, football, tennis, swimming and fencing, the Maccabi Games offer bowling competitions, chess and bridge — "the sport of Jewish grandmas", joked Osterer.
Off the field, the games will try to establish "a nonsports record" by throwing a Shabbat party that aims to be even bigger than a record-setting get-together last year in Tel Aviv.
Fifty years after then West Germany and Israel established diplomatic relations, the event marks the reassertion of the German Jewish community. At just a few thousand after the war, Germany’s Jewish community has grown to about 240,000.
Before the 2011 European Games in Vienna, "nobody wanted to compete as a German" at the Maccabi Games. The German delegation would march under the colours of Israel, rather than Germany’s black-red-gold national flag.
"Some have doubted it is fair to bring the games to Berlin while there are still Holocaust survivors," Meyer said. "But we are a new generation … and the question of guilt has been resolved for a long time."
The Maccabi magazine describes the ambivalence of Rebecca Gop, speaking for Berlin Jews born after the war, about her son’s attachment to Germany. "Today, my inner wall has fallen," she said in the Games’ Maccazine. "But I also know that for many of us, it is hard to call this country ‘our home’."
AFP
The Waldbuehne arena near the German capital Berlin, where the Maccabi Games are taking place. Picture: REDFERNS/ROB VERHORST
SEVENTY years after the end of the Second World War, Berlin is hosting the European Maccabi Games, dubbed the Jewish Olympics, at the site of the notorious 1936 "Nazi Games".
"These are the games of reconciliation," Alon Meyer, Maccabi Germany’s president, said of the 10-day event in which 2,300 athletes from 36 countries are competing in 19 disciplines from football to chess.
It is the first time Germany is hosting the Jewish Olympiad, launched in 1929 in Prague for European Jews, followed by the first world games held in 1932 in Tel Aviv in what was then British-mandated Palestine.
To be held under tight security, the 14th European Maccabi Games have "strong historical and political significance", said Chancellor Angela Merkel, who expressed Germany’s "gratitude" for the rebirth of Jewish life in the country responsible for the Holocaust.
After a memorial service yesterday in the former Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin, German President Joachim Gauck will today kick off the games as 15,000 spectators watch at the Waldbüehne, an amphitheatre near the stadium where Adolf Hitler opened the 1936 Summer Olympics.
The main events will take place in the Berlin Olympic Park built for the Nazi-era games, where the exclusion of Jewish athletes, which had been a worsening trend for decades amid a tide of anti-Semitism sweeping Europe, reached its peak.
The ban on Jews in many sports clubs was at the root of the Maccabi movement founded in the late 19th century, said Oren Osterer, a former basketball player and head of the organisation of these games, speaking on RBB public radio.
Inspired by the Zionist movement, Maccabi was born as a quest for the "muscular Jew", said Meyer. He pointed to an egalitarian spirit that values juniors, seniors and veterans, not just top performers. It also includes disciplines far removed from classic Olympic sports.
Besides basketball, football, tennis, swimming and fencing, the Maccabi Games offer bowling competitions, chess and bridge — "the sport of Jewish grandmas", joked Osterer.
Off the field, the games will try to establish "a nonsports record" by throwing a Shabbat party that aims to be even bigger than a record-setting get-together last year in Tel Aviv.
Fifty years after then West Germany and Israel established diplomatic relations, the event marks the reassertion of the German Jewish community. At just a few thousand after the war, Germany’s Jewish community has grown to about 240,000.
Before the 2011 European Games in Vienna, "nobody wanted to compete as a German" at the Maccabi Games. The German delegation would march under the colours of Israel, rather than Germany’s black-red-gold national flag.
"Some have doubted it is fair to bring the games to Berlin while there are still Holocaust survivors," Meyer said. "But we are a new generation … and the question of guilt has been resolved for a long time."
The Maccabi magazine describes the ambivalence of Rebecca Gop, speaking for Berlin Jews born after the war, about her son’s attachment to Germany. "Today, my inner wall has fallen," she said in the Games’ Maccazine. "But I also know that for many of us, it is hard to call this country ‘our home’."
AFP
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