THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS Friday, April 4, 1980 5 1936 Counter-Olympics a Casualty of the Spanish Civil War (Continued from Page 1) of sport — and Spain itself. Several hundred of the foreign athletes who had come to Barcelona, many of them Socialists and Com- munists, joined the pitched battles in the city's streets,a nd became the nucleus of the International Brigades. The first British volunteer to be killed in the civil war was Felicia Browne, a Communist painter who had come to Barcelona for the games. :After troops at the Pad- ralbes Barracks revolted shortly before dawn on July 19, one of the first Spaniards to rush to help the foreign athletes lodged in a big hotel in the Plaza de Espana was a lanky Cata- lan Communist named Ramon Mercader. Four years after performing this errand of mercy, Ramon Mercader assassinated Leon Trotsky with an ice ax in Mexico, evidently on Sta- lin's orders. - Mr. Agullo and others have maintained that Tito, today the ailing president of Yugoslavia, was involved in organiz- ing the Barcelona games. As a Comintern agent in- stalled in a small Left Bank hotel in Paris; Tito by late 1936 had put to- gether a "secret railway" to dispatch East Euro- pean volunteers to Spain. "After the civil war started," said Francesco Parramon, an important organizer of the Popular Olympiad who now lives in Paris, "I was with Tito in Barcelona with the Interna- tional Brigades. But I never knew of his having any- thing to do with the games." The idea for an anti- Fascist counter-Olympics first arose in Barcelona, which was filled with anarchist and revolution- ary sentiment, in May 1936. The project was embraced by Catalans of the upper middle class as well as working-class organiza- tions, but one of the key fig- ures who emerged among local sports organizations was a headstrong young - Daily—Hospital Sympathy FRUIT BASKETS 3 Times Daily:::: Nation-Wide Delivery $ 1695 RODNICK- McINERNEY'S 779-4140 772-4350 PARTY-WEDDING-BRIDESMAID-BAR $11ZVA LONG and SHORT DRESSES 1/2 OFF $199 GROUP S93 GROUP $59 GROUP $99 $49 $29 PETITE-MISSES-EXTRA LARGE SIZES SHANDELS 154 SOUTH WOODWARD BIRMINGHAM * MI 2-4150 Communist named Andres Martin, secretary general of the Workers Culture and Sports Federation. Mundo Deportivo, a Bar- celona sports daily, called him "the soul of the games" that were about to be held, and published with its ac- count a photograph of a —parade -in Moscow showing "the glorious epoch of Stalin marching before the tomb of Lenin." A satirical Catalan- language weekly called La Be Negre took a more sardonic view of the games observing that "the great stadium of Moscow was, until a little while ago, the stadium of Barcelona." It humor- ously advised its Catalan readers that by frying smelly fish or turning on butane gas they could over the telephone. Communist Party and its drive unwanted foreign As the deadline for the numerous foreign Comin- athletes lodged in private Barcelona games ap- tern advisers had infil- homes into the streets. proached, a Soviet tennis trated the Olympiad, but The Catalan Generalitat, squad featuring "the lead- they did not control it. the republican government ing players from the USSR" One Communist-inspired in Madrid and the French was said to be on the way, cartoon shows an Olympiad Popular Front Government but at the 11th hour Moscow archer throwing a spear at a of Leon Blum provided some pulled back from sending target labeled "f.a.i-xisme,_' financial support for the teams. Josep Antonio a play on words in Catalan. games, and Catalan news- Trabal, who in 1936 was The F.A.I. was the powerful papers recorded that dele- president of the Spanish Iberian Anarchist Federa- gations arrived from Athletic Federation, re- tion; it and fascism, or France, Belgium, Britain, called that the Soviet Union "faixisme," were the Canada, Switzerland, Swe- wanted "a more radical de- enemies of the Communists. den, Greece, Norway, Hun- nomination given the- gary, Czechoslovakia, Bul- games," and Mr. Parramon garia, Poland, Algeria, recounted that at an organ- OFFICIAL AGENCY Morocco and Palestine. On izational meeting in Paris July ,16, nine American the head of the Soviet dele- Christian Jewish Rela- athletes arrived from Paris, gation insisted that their tions on March 12 com- and the Catalan daily La name be changed for Popu- mended the CRA, the AUTHORIZED Publicitat recorded, "three lar Olympiad to the Olym- Council of Churches SALES & REPAIRS of them are of the black race pic Games of Barcelona, an "and other concerned — two men and a woman." overt challenge to the Be- Christians for their (Ads) The organizers of the forthright criticism of Popular Olympiad prided rlin Games in early August. Another explanation for Rev. Ernest O'Neill's re- themselves on welcoming the last-minute pullback is cent anti-Semitic ser- all races and creeds, in con- that the Soviet Union was mons." trast to Hitler's Olympics, unsettled by the turbulent In a sermon' delivered at Jewelers Ltd. and there were translators atmosphere of Barcelona, the Campus Church on Creative Jewelers Diamonds — who spoke Esperanto as where anarchists were by Precious Stones — March 16, O'Neill accused well as a number of other far the strongest political Precision Time Pieces his critics of gross distortion HARVARD ROW MALL languages. force. 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Florida, an admitted Treb- linka SS 'guard, and the Court of Appeals reversed and remanded a decision against alleged Nazi war criminal Frank Walus of Chicago._ The Walus case will have to be retired. With the Hazners case decided, there is now no active Nazi war criminal Graber Tracks by Blinds & Designs Inc. case in a U.S. court. Of the 16 cases currently under limited time only litigation, all are either in installation available at additional cost pre-trial discovery or in var- Please Note! Manufacturers suggested retail prices on window treatments do vary — Greene ious stages of appeal. The Bros. uses the lowest of these — we advise y4p to check and compare. OSI is -investigating the files of some 400 alleged Window Shade Co. 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The CRA deplores and rejects these state- ments and expresses its willingness to meet with various Christian bodies to prepard an appropriate, studied response to the problem of anti-Semitic elements in Christian preaching." A statement issued by the Minnesota Interreli- gious Committee on EQMEGA1 George Ohrenstein , . " Your modem Office, U.S. Loses Nazi Case ALBANY, N.Y. (JTA) — The Office of Special Inves- tigation (OSI) of the Justice Department will appeal Judge Anthony DeGaeto's denial of its case against ac- cused Nazi war criminal Vilia Hazners. The Justice Department had asked De Gaeto, who is an Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) judge, to disqualify himself from the case last fall after a Jewish Tele- graphic Agency report last Aug. 24 revealed that two years earlier he had re- marked from the bench that Jews always answer ques- tions with questions. De-. Gaeto did not choose this op- tion. DeGaeto ruled on Feb. 27 that INS could not deport Hazners, a 74-year-old resi- dent of Dresden, N.Y., be- cause the government had failed to prove that he had concealed his participation in the Holocaust. The Hazners decision followed three other Feb- ruary setbacks in the government's efforts to denaturalize and deport Nazi war criminals. In Baltimore, the govern- ment lost its deportation case against Karlis De- tlays, an admitted member of the Latvian SS who is a friend of Haz- ners. Introducing for the 80's SUPERIOR Fabric Vanes, Design 2,000 and Cane Vane Verticals on 25% -OFF * _ GREENE BROS. With Coupon f2 C C•J OFFICE SUPPLIES 20% OFF OFFER EXPIRES 418: 80_ _ DiariL With Coupon ART 3 SUPPLIES 15% .OFF OFFER EXPIRES 4-18-80 With Coupon a) DRAFTING -I SUPPLIES 15% OFF OFFER EXPIRES 4-18-80 Sy Draft Office, Art & Drafting Supplies Lincoln Center, 10 1 /A, Greenfield 96 Oak Park, MI 8-2620