Debunking Viral Claim About the Talmud and Minors
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Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller were likely removed due to antisemitism and the desire by the USA and International Olympic Committees to not embarrass Hitler.
Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller were getting ready for the race of their lives. It was the morning of August 8, 1936, and in just a few hours they’d be representing their country by running the first two legs of the 4 x 100-meter relay race trials for the United States at the Berlin Summer Olympic Games. The finals were scheduled for the next day.
Then everything came crashing down. A meeting was called for the USA track team, and Glickman and Stoller – the only Jews on that team – learned they’d been suddenly dropped from the race they were scheduled to run.
Why?
Marty Glickman was born in the Bronx in1917 to Jewish parents that had emigrated from Romania to New York City. He was a high school track star, New York State’s indoor and outdoor sprint champion, and had entered the Olympics as an 18-year-old college freshman track star from Syracuse University.
Sam Stoller was born in Cincinnati in 1915. He was a college track star and worked his way through the University of Michigan by sweeping floors and washing dishes at his fraternity house. He was the co-holder of the world’s record in the 60-yard dash and was a 21-year-old college senior when he was named to the USA Olympic team.
Glickman (left) and Stoller train aboard the ship Manhattan on their way to Berlin. July 1936.
In 1933, two years after Berlin was selected by the International Olympic Committee to host the 1936 Olympics, Adolph Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany as leader of the ultra-right-wing National Socialist German Workers (Nazi) Party. Hitler began to reshape the country into what he saw as a “new Germany’. In his autobiography, Hitler clearly stated his goals – “the task of the Nationalist State will be to preserve the race.”
His vision included reshaping borders, adding territory, rebuilding the German military, restricting German citizen freedoms (speech, assembly, press), appropriating homes, property, and businesses, and jailing political opponents. The German Parliament enacted the “Enabling Act” which effectively made him a dictator and answerable to no one.
“Racial purity”, “Racial Hygiene”, “Alien Blood”, and the “Germanic Race” were code phrases of the Nazi Party, meant to identify what they believed to be inferior “Non-Aryans”. Germany’s half a million Jews were now considered non-Aryan and treated differently, ranging from segregation, physical attacks, business boycotts, firings from high level positions in medicine, law, education and other professions.
The world would soon discover that the horror of the New Germany included concentration camps and genocide.
The Nazis saw the 1936 Summer Olympics as a great opportunity to showcase the “New Germany” to athletes from 52 nations. They saw the Olympics as a catalyst to increase tourism and portray Germany in a positive light. Tourists saw propaganda everywhere, in colorful posters and complimentary magazine articles. At the same time, the German government cracked down on their press and radio outlets squashing any criticism or negative reporting.
Simultaneously to their prep for the Olympics, Germany expanded their territory and invaded the Rhineland, a zone between the West and Germany created after World War One and removed “Non-Aryan” German Jewish athletes from their own Olympic teams: boxer
Erich Seelig, tennis player Daniel Prenn, and high jumper Gretel Bergmann.
Mayer giving the Nazi salute at the 1936 Summer Olympics
Helene Mayer, a fencer, was allowed on the German National Team in order to appease international opinion. She did not consider herself as Jewish, but she was viewed as 'non-Aryan' because her father was Jewish. Meyer went on to win a silver medal, and on the podium, like all other German athletes, proceeded to give the Nazi salute.[10]
The Summer Olympics opened on Saturday August 1, 1936, before a crowd of 110,000 spectators.
America’s black athletes competed sensationally at the Berlin Olympics. Ralph Metcalfe (silver in the 100-meter dash), Cornelius Johnson and David Albritton (gold and silver in the high jump), Matthew Robinson (silver in the 200-meter dash), John Woodruff (gold in the 800-meter run), Archie Williams (gold in the 400-meter race), James LuValle (bronze in the 400-meter race), Fritz Pollard (bronze in the 110-meter hurdles), and Jack Wilson (silver in bantamweight boxing) all won medals.
The American delegation’s star was Jesse Owens, a black track and field star from Ohio State University. He had won three gold medals for the long jump, 100-meter and 200-meter dashes.
Jesse Owens at the 1936 Olympics
The Nazi leadership was not pleased by the strength of America’s “Non-Aryan” athletes. They forbade their newspapers from addressing the racial angle, and in the private journal of Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, he wrote, “We Germans won a Gold medal, the Americans three, of which two were Negroes. That is a disgrace. White people should be ashamed of themselves.”
Stoller and Glickman, the only Jews on the USA track team, were assured by US Olympic track coach Lawson Robertson that they’d run in the 4 x 100 relay. Stoller would be the first runner, and he’d pass the baton to Glickman as USA’s second runner. The two practiced passing the baton daily for over a week.
But on August 8, 1936, Coach Robertson called a 9:00 am meeting and announced the decision that affected Stoller and Glickman.
“Boys, this is a tough decision. You’ve all done so well here, and I hate to disappoint any of you. But Coach Cromwell and I have decided to go with Jesse (Owens), Ralph (Metcalf), Foy (Draper), and Frank (Wykoff). Marty, Sam, I’m sorry but that’s our decision.”
Years later, Glickman wrote that Jesse Owens stood up and said “I’ve already got three medals, Coach. I don’t need anymore, let Marty and Sam run, they deserve it”.
Coach Cromwell’s alleged reply was, “You’ll do as you’re told”.
The revamped USA relay team won the race by 12 yards and set a new world record.
Stoller called the snub “the most humiliating episode in my life.”
Several theories have emerged over the decades explaining why Stoller and Glickman were benched at the last moment.
One theory said the Germans were entering “secret runners” on their relay team and the US had to counter with Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalf, their fastest runners, to replace Stoller and Glickman.
Another theory said that Draper and Wykoff were from the University of Southern California, and so was the USA track coach Dean Cromwell, so it was simply a matter of the coach looking out for his own runners.
But a popular theory was that of antisemitism and the desire by the USA and International Olympic Committees to not embarrass Hitler and the Nazis any further. Seeing so many black Americans already on the winner’s podium was bad enough, imagine the Nazi outrage if two Jewish athletes would be up there for a medal ceremony?
No definitive reason has ever been confirmed, so the mystery lingers on almost a century later.
Sources
Amazing article
Marty Glickman was a New York sports announcer, I looked up to him as my ultimate role model. To think that he was victimized, not just by the coaches Cromwell et al, but also by Avery Brundage, head of the USOC at that time, and a strong advocate for having the games in Nazi Germany, I know that his heart was broken, as was mine upon learning of this tragic and embarrasing event. (By the way: the very last non African American sprinter to medal for the USA in any Olympic games was Gerald Ashworth, a Jew from Dartmouth who won gold...on the 4X100 Meter relay, 1964 Tokyo.
To the extent that this was blatant antisemitism, the entire US running delegation is faulted and shamed, except for Black Americans.
This story has been covered many times. The larger question: were there any Jews competing in the 1938 Olympics? There was, for example, a documentary about Jewish women swimmers who were banned. Nothing else, as far I I know, has reported on this. And Who else?
Ann: there was no Olympic Games in 1938. They are held every four years. The 1940 and 1944 games were both cancelled due to World War II. They continued in 1948 in London.
Thank-you for this article; I was totally unaware of this issue.
Glad to spread the news. I grew up in NYC and became familiar with Glickman as a FANTASTIC sportscaster. He broadcast the NY football Giants on the radio and created a glorious listening experience.
Thank you for informing us about this!
You are very welcome, Bracha, hope you enjoy my other articles as well.
Where could I get a copy of this wonderful photograph,
The photo of Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller can be found in The Nazi Olympics by Susan D. Bachrach on page 105
I wonder what happened to Mayer.
The Nazis( may their name be erased) didn't let the Jewish Americans run but let the blacks run you know why because they thought the Germans will beat the blacks, instead the blacks out runned the Germans and the Jewish Americans were happy the blacks beat the Germans, this is the true story in a nutshell
Sorry to say this, as the mythology of Jesse Owens disproving Aryan superiority, is exactly that: A myth: The Nazis considered Blacks to be sub human, and called the USA'S fantastic athletes, the Black Auxiliary. They also considered "white" Americans inferior as a "mongrel race". Such was Nazism
I know, about the Nazis( may their name be erased), my mother( obm) was in the one of worst Concentration Camps Auschwitz- Birneau