An exhibition in Magdeburg shows Jewish sports stars before 1933 and after. The show under the title “Between Success and Persecution” will open on October 8th on Cathedral Square, as the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, co-organizer, announced on Thursday in Magdeburg. She wants to use large-format sculptural presentations to show the large role that Jewish athletes played in the development of modern sports in Germany.
Before 1933, Jewish athletes were celebrated idols of their time as national players, Olympic champions and world and European champions, the announcement says. In the Nazi state they were excluded, disenfranchised, forced to flee or murdered. The exhibition aims to remember these athletes through selected fates.
The biographies of the football player Walther Bensemann (1873-1934), the ten-time German athletics champion Lilli Henoch (1899-1942) and the later German national basketball coach Ralph Klein (1931-2008) are presented.
According to the information, the exhibition creates a connection to the present with the swimmer Sarah Poewe (born 1983). Poewe was the first Jewish athlete to win an Olympic bronze medal for Germany in 2004 in Athens after the end of the Second World War.
The show by the Center for German Sports History, the German-Israeli Society Magdeburg, the Saxony-Anhalt state office of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation and the Saxony-Anhalt State Center for Political Education can be seen on the cathedral square until November 10th. epd
