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The Jewish Olympians Killed By Hitler

Matt Lebovic | Times of Israel

A

gnes Grunwald-Spier’s recent
book Who Betrayed the Jews?
includes information on 30
Jewish Olympians killed in the Holocaust.
• One of these heroes was renowned
skier Bronislaw Czech, who represented
Poland in three Olympic Games.
When the Nazis began implementing
the Final Solution, Czech’s fame worked
against him. At age 32, he was sent to
Auschwitz. There, he was offered free-
dom in exchange for training German
youth in skiing, but he refused. Czech
died in Auschwitz, and dozens of streets
and schools are named for him in Poland
today.
• Another world champion was the
Tunisian-born Victor “Young” Perez, a
French Jewish boxing star. In 1931, he
became the youngest flyweight world
champion in boxing history. None of this
mattered when Perez was denounced in
1943 and sent to Auschwitz.
“At first the SS let him train so that he
could fight in a show fight for their enter-
tainment against a member of the SS,”

wrote Grunwald-Spier. “After
hours later.”
that, he was treated like all
• Among interwar
the other prisoners and he
Europe’s most patriotic and
was forced to participate
versatile Jewish athletes was
in boxing matches for the
Lilly Henoch, who rose to
amusement of the Nazis. By
prominence in Germany
1945 Victor had survived 140
with the Berlin Sports Club,
bouts in 15 months and won
which was one-quarter
139,” she wrote.
Jewish in the 1920s. Her
The young champion’s life
specialties included hockey,
ended at age 33 on the death
handball and long-jumping,
march from Auschwitz.
and she was the go-to cap-
• A Jewish Olympic fencer Bronislaw Czech
tain for several team sports.
targeted for his athleticism
Had Germany been allowed
was Attila Petschauer, who
to participate in the 1924
won team Olympic medals in 1928 in
Olympics, Henoch might have earned sev-
Amsterdam and in 1932 in Los Angeles
eral medals, having set world records in
for Hungary. While imprisoned in the
discus, shot-put and the 100-meter relay.
labor camp Davidovka in Ukarine, he
Henoch’s athletic versatility and ability
was singled out by guards who had been
to earn Germany medals meant nothing
informed of Petschauer’s fame.
in 1933, when she was dismissed from
“[A witness] saw the guards tell Attila
the Berlin Sports Club. In September
to take off his clothes and climb a tree
1942, Henoch and family members were
and crow like a rooster,” wrote Grunwald- deported from Germany to Riga, where
Spier. “As he crowed they sprayed him
they were murdered by an Einsatzgruppen
with cold water which froze and eventu-
mobile killing unit later that year.
ally he fell off the tree. They took him
• Of the Olympians killed in the Shoah,
back to the barracks but he died a few
quite a few were from the Netherlands. In

that country, Jewish women helped take
home numerous medals for gymnastics,
including at the 1928 Olympics held in
Amsterdam.
One top Dutch Jewish gymnast was
Judikje “Jud” Simons, who helped the
team earn a gold medal in 1928. After
the team’s win, Simons and her husband
ran an orphanage in Utrecht, where they
lived with their own two children. During
the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands,
the family was given a chance to escape
deportation to the death camps, but
Simons and her husband refused to leave
the orphans.
On March 3, 1943, the entire family and
dozens of children from the orphanage
were gassed at Sobibor.
In her book, Grunwald-Spier docu-
mented the shared fate of several Dutch
Jewish women from the 1928 Olympic
women’s gymnastics team, deported with
their husbands and young children to
Sobibor, where more than 200,000 Jews
were killed. Also murdered at Sobibor
was the team’s Jewish coach, Gerrit
Kleerekoper, along with his wife and
daughter.
• Numbered among those killed by the
Nazis are also several Jewish Olympian
soccer players — hailing from countries
such as Germany, Poland and Romania.

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86 August 25 • 2016

Obituaries