Read Online Hitler's Olympics by Christopher Hilton - Free Book Online Page B

was first raised, to the editorial pages, and from the meetings of the Amateur Athletic Union to the Congressional floor. The presence of an American team at the 1936 Olympic Games became a matter of national significance and remained so until the day the team set sail for Germany. In the twelve months preceding the Games reporters, columnists, sports writers, and editorial boards debated how an American presence at the Games would be interpreted and what was more likely to violate America’s neutrality: boycotting or participating in the Games. 15

    Perhaps the view expressed by the Norfolk Pilot , Virginia, was typical of the domestic American mood. It wasn’t ‘the function of the Olympic Games to distribute clean bills of political health. Too many glass houses are involved.’ That view held until the paper discovered anti-Semitic signs were decorating Garmisch. The Pilot wanted a boycott. 16
    The twin themes converged on Helene Mayer, teaching at a fashionable girls’ school in Oakland. Classified as a ‘half Jew’, her club in Offenbach had barred her under the ‘non-Aryan’ rule. The German Academic Exchange Council withdrew her grant but she came from a wealthy family, continued to live and fence in America and won the national championships from 1933 to 1935.
    Like Bergmann, she could be exploited.
    The New York Times reported the IOC had received a ‘purported text’ from the German Organising Committee inviting her to join the German fencing team. Von Tschammer und Osten claimed there would be two Jews, Mayer and (presumably) Bergmann, and as a consequence promises were being kept. However, Mayer sent a telegram to an official at the German Jewish Men’s League in New York saying ‘Have not received any such invitation from German Olympic Committee’.
    If the Nazis intended to exploit Mayer, she intended to exploit them. Both sides knew the respective strengths and weaknesses of their positions. Their dispute became, in an exquisitely appropriate way, a fencing match complete with tactical advances and retreats, hits and misses, and many, many feints. 17
    An American magazine cabled her asking if she had been invited, whether the American team should go to Berlin, if she regarded herself as a refugee and would she comment on the Nazi newpapers that regularly reported her suicide. She replied sardonically that she had not received an invitation, couldn’t answer as to whether Americans should go – none of her business – and certainly did not regard herself as a refugee. She added a feint, ‘My suicides amuse me.’
    Lewald journeyed to America to promote the Games and said he would be inviting her to the German trials in February ‘with all expenses paid’. He said he hoped she had kept her form as a leading fencer – perhaps he was unaware of what she had done in the championships – because they wanted Jewish athletes of Olympic standard but ‘we have none’. He was sure Americans would not want the Germans to have token Jews …
    Mayer said that she had not received any communication from Lewald. Von Tschammer und Osten sent a letter to Sherrill reiterating that Mayer and Bergmann had been invited and would be given the same treatment as any other ‘candidates’ for the team ‘although they are Jewesses’. He enclosed a copy of the letter that had been sent to Mayer although this might have been the letter to her and not a copy at all, meaning it had not been sent to her.
    Mayer said she had not received any letter and added that she didn’t believe a letter had been or would be sent.
    That autumn Brundage and Sherrill journeyed to Germany and met Hitler. Sherrill insisted that the German Olympic team be open to Jewish athletes with, presumably, the implication that if it wasn’t, American participation would come into question. Sherrill told the San Francisco Chronicle that he had gone to Germany with ‘the purpose of getting at least one Jew on the German Olympic team’.