SA Maccabi delegation off to Berlin Games

Jack Milner

The opening ceremony will take place on Monday at a site constructed by the Nazis for the 1936 Olympics. The European Maccabi Games end on August 5.

Maccabi SA has regularly taken part in the Pan American Games, but attending the 14^th European Maccabi Games will be a first. “It’s momentous stuff,” said Cliff Garrun, Maccabi SA chairman on Monday night. “It’s highly symbolic and I’m quite caught up in the whole thing.”

Garrun explained that outside of Europe, countries specifically have to be invited. “Ronen Cohen, who is our futsal convener, has been organising this for about 18 months. As a result we have a junior, senior and masters futsal team at the Games, as well as two swimmers.

“We also know the Americans and Australians will be there.”

Futsal is a modified form of soccer with five players per side, on a smaller, typically indoor pitch, usually 25m x 16m. Its name comes from the Portuguese Futebol de salão, which can be translated as “room football”. It was developed in Brazil in the 1930s and 1940s and is still very popular there.

According to organiser Alon Meyer, president of Maccabi Germany, the decision to host the European Maccabi Games in Berlin was a difficult one but he wanted it to be seen as a “signal of reconciliation” 70 years after the end of the Second World War.

“There were a lot of people who said that they would never in their lives step again on German soil and we have to respect that,” Meyer told a group of foreign reporters on Monday.

But, he added: “We are a new generation… and the question of guilt is long resolved.”

The German government is openly supporting the event and German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said it sent a strong message to hold the event on the site of the 1936 Olympic Games held under the Nazi regime.

“This is the stadium where the Olympic Games were exploited by Hitler,” he said on RBB radio. “To hold on that spot a Jewish sporting event like the Maccabi Games, is an important and nice message.”

The European Maccabi Games take place every four years and were last held in Vienna. This year some 2 300 athletes from 38 countries are expected. Though only Jewish athletes can compete in events, “let’s play together” matches are also being staged with non-Jewish professional and celebrity teams.

Daniel Botmann, managing director of Germany’s Central Council of Jews, said the hope was that a peaceful and successful sporting event would show to a wider public that Jewish life in Germany and Europe was about more than the debate over anti-Semitism or protection of synagogues.

“The European Maccabi Games show that Jews are a part of society – an important part,” he said.

As part of the whole exercise, junior athletes are to be educated on the Holocaust and Jewish history in Germany.