Featuring the opening of Between Success & Persecution: Jewish Stars in German Sports Before 1933 and Beyond
8 November @ 2:30 pm – 5:00 pm
The programme will include formal remarks by H.E. Mr Oliver Rentschler, Ambassador-Designate of the Federal Republic of Germany to South Africa, and keynote addresses by Dr Berno Bahro, research director and author of the exhibition, and Hazel Shore, daughter of champion track and field athlete Martha Jacob. Survivors and descendants will take part in a candle-lighting ceremony, followed by a musical performance by violinist Dr Sharon De Kock and a walkabout of the exhibition.
About the exhibition
Between Success & Persecution tells the stories of German Jewish athletes who were celebrated heroes of their time: national team members, record holders, and world, European and Olympic champions. It honours their contribution to modern German sport while documenting the persecution they faced under the Nazi regime. Some were practising Jews; others discovered their Jewish heritage only after 1933, and a few were used by Nazi officials to deflect boycott calls ahead of the 1936 Berlin Olympics. For all of them, the dictatorship meant ostracism, exile or murder. The exhibition closes in the present with swimmer Sarah Poewe, who in 2004 became the first Jewish athlete to win an Olympic medal for Germany since the Second World War.