90 Years after the Berlin Olympics: Remembering Champions Lost in the Holocaust

In a world where antisemitism is once again raising its head, including in international sport, the Jewish champions erased from history must be restored to it.

When we speak about the Holocaust, we tend to think in numbers: six million Jews murdered, thousands of communities destroyed, and an entire Jewish world annihilated. Yet behind those numbers were also Olympic champions, world-record holders, national champions, and athletes regarded as the finest in their fields.

Before the Second World War, Jewish athletes were among the leading forces in European sport. They won Olympic medals, led national teams, and excelled in nearly every discipline: gymnastics, fencing, swimming, athletics, football, boxing, rowing, tennis, wrestling, and ice hockey. They were not only outstanding competitors; they were cultural heroes in their countries.

This month marks the 90th anniversary of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Hitler’s carefully orchestrated propaganda spectacle and a defining turning point. While the world admired the new stadiums, flashy ceremonies, and flawless organization, the Nazi regime was already excluding Jewish athletes from clubs, national teams, and the center of sporting life. The Games were used to project an image of an enlightened and modern Germany, even as racism, antisemitism, and persecution deepened beneath the surface.

The persecution of Jewish athletes did not begin at Auschwitz. It began on the playing field.

We will never know how many Jewish athletes were murdered in the Holocaust. Many were killed at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Theresienstadt, Sobibor, Majdanek, Mauthausen, and other camps and killing sites across Europe. Along with them vanished sports clubs, archives, photographs, trophies, and records—an entire world of achievement cut short in an instant.

Alfred Flatow was one of Germany’s earliest sporting heroes. At the first modern Olympic Games in Athens in 1896, he won three gold medals and became a gymnastics legend. Years later, the same country that had cheered him deported him to Theresienstadt, where he died of starvation. His cousin, Olympic champion Gustav Flatow, was also murdered in the Holocaust.

Attila Petschauer, a two-time Olympic fencing champion and one of the greatest fencers in Hungarian history, was sent to a forced-labor battalion and died after brutal abuse. Hungarian Olympic champion János Garay was also murdered. Four members of the Dutch women’s gymnastics team that won gold at the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics—Estella Agsteribbe, Anna Dresden-Polak, Helena “Lea” Nordheim, and Judikje Simons—were murdered in the Holocaust. Only Elka de Levie survived in hiding. The team that once stood together on the Olympic podium was never reunited.

Yet not every story ended in death. Some athletes achieved the almost unimaginable: they survived the inferno, overcame wounded bodies and souls, and returned to compete at the highest level.

French swimmer Alfred Nakache lost his wife and daughter at Auschwitz, yet only three years after liberation he once again represented France at the Olympic Games. The legendary Ágnes Keleti survived in Hungary under a false identity and went on to become one of the most decorated gymnasts in Olympic history, winning ten medals and later contributing greatly to the development of gymnastics in Israel. Ben Helfgott survived Buchenwald and Theresienstadt, represented Britain at two Olympic Games, and devoted his life to education and Holocaust remembrance.

Their stories teach us that victory is not measured only in medals. Sometimes the greatest victory is the ability to rise again.

90 years after the Berlin Olympics, these stories do not belong only to history. When an athlete refuses to shake the hand of an Israeli opponent, when a competitor withdraws to avoid facing an Israeli, or when spectators turn the stands into a platform for hateful chants, such incidents can no longer be dismissed as isolated. History reminds us that antisemitism does not begin only with laws, fences, ghettos, and camps. It also begins on the playing field—when exclusion is met with silence and racist incidents become just another image on the broadcast.

At the 2016 Rio Olympics, Egyptian judoka Islam El Shehaby refused to shake the hand of Israel’s Or Sasson after their match. At the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, Algerian judoka Fethi Nourine withdrew to avoid a possible bout against Israel’s Tohar Butbul. In recent years, we have also witnessed antisemitic abuse in the stands, inciting chants, boycotts, and attempts—some of them successful—to exclude Israeli athletes and national teams from international competition.

There is no comparison between today’s reality and Europe in the 1930s. But we must ask why an athlete’s nationality, religion, or identity is once again becoming a legitimate factor in how that person is treated. Sport should be a place where people are judged by their talent, determination, and achievements—not by who they are.

The International Olympic Committee, FIFA, UEFA, FIBA, the EuroLeague, judo, tennis federations, and leading sports bodies in every discipline must draw a clear and consistent line. Anyone who boycotts an athlete because of nationality or identity, refuses to compete against that athlete, or brings racism and antisemitism onto the field or into the stands must know that there will be consequences—not merely condemnation or a symbolic fine, but meaningful sanctions against athletes, clubs, national teams, and fans who violate the rules.

As we mark 90 years since Hitler’s propaganda spectacle in Berlin, we must restore the names of the champions murdered in the Holocaust to the history of sport, while honoring those who survived and continued to excel. Remembering them means more than honoring their memory; it means returning them to their rightful place in the story of world sport.

Before they were victims, they were champions.

The Holocaust robbed the world of an entire generation of athletes who might have continued to break records, win medals, and inspire generations. Their lives cannot be restored. But their place in history can—and must—be. Education and prevention must be accompanied by deterrence, because once hatred becomes part of the rules of the game, it is no longer merely a problem for sport. It is a problem for society as a whole.