The Jewish Olympics, the 14th European Maccabi Games, will begin on Tuesday, seventy years after World War II’s end.
Family members of Sam Stoller and Marty Glickman will be joining the USA Delegation at the Games in Berlin, seventy years after World War II’s end.
Both Stoller and Glickman qualified for the USA 4 x100 meter relay team to compete at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, but were removed by the head of the U.S. Olympic Team, Avery Brundage, immediately prior to the race in order not to ‘upset Hitler’.
Berlin will host the European Maccabi Games at the stadium which was built under the auspices of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
“These are the games of reconciliation, ” Maccabi Germany president Alon Meyer said of the 10-day event in which 2, 300 athletes from 36 countries will compete.
Following a memorial service at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp on Monday, German President Joachim Gauck will open the Games at an outdoor amphitheater in Berlin on Tuesday.
“Some have doubted it is fair to bring the Games to Berlin while there are still Holocaust survivors, ” Meyer told AFP. “But we are a new generation…and the question of guilt has been resolved for a long time.”
