Antisemitism and Sports
Jewish track-and-field athlete Margaret Lambert remembers the pressure she felt when competing in the Adolf Hitler Stadium during the 1936 Olympic tryouts for a non-Jewish audience that objected to her presence. Maria Breitinger had her decathelon medal denied by her antisemitic school principal. Jules Forgacs remembers his first soccer match after liberation.
USC Shoah Foundation Finci-Viterbi Executive Director Stephen Smith showed this clip reel of Holocaust survivor testimony before his remarks today at “Anti-Semitism and Sports: A Global Symposium on Sports and Society”at Fordham University in New York.
The summit brought together executives, athletes, owners, journalists, media personalities, scholars, and activists from around the globe to address the realities of antisemitism, its interface with sports, and to debate the strategies for changing the playing field. Other speakers included Ross Greenburg, former President of HBO Sports; and NFL Hall of Famer Ron Mix.
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