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The European Maccabi Games in Berlin

The largest Jewish sports event, with 2,300 athletes from 36 countries, will take place for the first time in Germany.

22.07.2015
© Rafael Herlich - EMG 2015

“If not now, then when?” Oren Osterer gives voice to what has electrified the global Maccabi movement since the choice of Berlin as the site of its next games. For the first time Jewish athletes will come together in Germany for their largest sporting event. A fitting moment, in the view of the former basketball player: 70 years after the Shoah and 50 years after the establishment of diplomatic relations between Israel and Germany. Osterer is organizational director of the “European Maccabi Games”. With a young team and a budget of around five million euros, he is preparing the sports event, which not least is of great social and political significance: German Federal President Joachim Gauck is patron and will open the games, and the federal government is providing them with financial support.

“A powerful symbol”

The more than 2,300 competitors from 36 countries will meet at the very place where, in 1936, Jewish athletes were excluded from the Olympic Games. The Berlin Olympic Park, then the scene of Nazi propaganda, will be the central sports field, prominent athletes such as the football world champion Jérome Boateng are among the sponsors, and the state-owned sports facility will be made available free of charge. The opening ceremony on 28 July 2015 takes place at the park’s Waldbühne, or forest stage, and is planned as a big party with a cultural programme, at which the organizers expect 15,000 guests – each an ambassador of tolerance and openness. The awarding of the games to Berlin has been called by the President of the Maccabi in Germany, Alon Meyer, a “powerful symbol –holding the largest Jewish sports event since the war at the former site of terror”.

Burgeoning nationalism, growing anti-Semitism and the expulsion of Jewish athletes from gymnastics clubs in the early twentieth century promoted the establishment of Jewish sports clubs. Berlin was already at the forefront of this movement in 1898, which in 1921 led to the founding of the Maccabi World Union. Today it comprises 60 countries and approximately 400,000 members play sports in more than 450 clubs, which are open to athletes of all religions. The Union sees itself as a Zionist organization; the International Olympic Committee (IOC) classified it in 1960 as a “sports association of Olympic rank”.

The making of sporting records in the competitions in traditional sports such as basketball, fencing and dressage riding or in disciplines such as bridge, chess and bowling is hardly to be expected. Participants are predominantly amateurs, who have financed their own travel and the 900 euros entry fee. Athletes from around the world are guests of the European Games, which take place alternately with the international Maccabiades every four years. Many of the participants have German roots, and some are grandchildren of athletes who the Nazis excluded in 1936. Today, says Berlin Sports Senator Frank Henkel, “Berlin wants to take the opportunity to present itself as a cosmopolitan, peaceful and tolerant metropolis, and to set an example of reconciliation”.

European Maccabi Games, 28 July to 5 August 2015 in Berlin

www.emg2015.de

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