The Kosher Bookworm

Nazism, communism and the Olympics

King Of The Road: From Bergen Belsen to the Olympic Games by Dr. Shaul Ladany

Issue of August 22, 2008

By the time you read this, the 2008 Olympics in Communist China may be over. Nevertheless, there are a few pieces of unfinished business on this topic that remain to be brought to your attention. There are a few more Jews who have participated in previous Olympics whose stories should be told.

The first is a biography by Dr. Shaul Ladany, a Yugoslavian-born Israeli and a survivor of Bergen Belsen, who ultimately made it to the 1968 Mexico Olympics and survived the 1972 Munich Olympics. His book tells his story, one of pure grit and survival, that personifies the Jewish people’s history of perseverance. Throughout his life, Ladany fought all odds and made a productive life for himself, earning a Ph.D. in Business Administration from Columbia University and devoting much of his occupational career to industrial engineering.

Yet Ladany had another passion that would take him around the world: the sport of race walking, a skill that he used to good advantage at the Olympics.

This book is filled with details of his colorful and contentious life, beginning with his youth in Europe and his Holocaust experiences, through his life in Israel and his athletic passions. Though Ladany, now 72, has slowed from his more youthful lifestyle, he remains a feisty character.

The story of Ladany’s Holocaust experience as an eight-year-old, and of his escape from the Islamo-Fascist murder spree of his fellow Israeli athletes at Munich in 1972, serve as the centerpiece of the book. Recalling the events in deep sorrow for those who needlessly died, he does not blame those who could have assured better security at Munich.

The book was first published in Hebrew in 1997, and its English translation was published by Geffen Publishing House to inspire and motivate through the example of Ladany’s perseverance and persistence.

Other Olympic observations

Chanan Tigay of JTA wrote a beautiful piece concerning the experience of another Israeli athlete who escaped the 1972 Munich massacre. His name was Dan Alon, and, like many other Israelis, was a veteran of the Israel Defense Forces. He served four years and was a technician securing bombs to fighter jets during the Six Day War. One year after Munich, he did the same during the Yom Kippur War.

Alon’s pride in his people and country, and athletic prowess as a skilled fencer, is something that we should all take pride in given the trials and tribulations that he faced all these years, just for being Israeli.

According to Tigay, the release of Steven Spielberg’s movie, “Munich,” an epic film detailing Israel’s efforts at hunting down the terrorists responsible for the killings, motivated Alon to start writing a book on his experiences at Munich, and to lecture at colleges and Jewish communities around the world. When the book reaches completion, we will be exposed to his point of view about this Olympian tragedy.

History has a strange way of forcing unpleasant truths to come to the surface. This year’s Olympic games, the third held in a totalitarian country, witnessed obscene conduct by Iranian athletes who refused to play their Israeli counterparts. This was tolerated by Olympic officials and turned the peaceful themes that are at the heart of the Olympian ideology into a lie. This behavior, surely motivated by the genocide-oriented regime that rules Iran today, should have drawn the ire of every peace-loving country. Instead, indifference has been the overall reaction. In some cases this conduct was encouraged.

This rancid behavior occurred in a venue most conducive to it, Communist-ruled China. Communism has been the best friend of Islamic radicals since the beginning of the last century. Communism opposed Zionism from the beginning and the USSR was the prime arms supplier to both Arab dictatorships that enabled them to wage war upon Israel. Communism was the chief ideological inspiration and strategic arms supplier to all major terrorist organizations until the fall of the USSR.

Communist China was just right behind the USSR in their propaganda and ideological tilt that was rabid against the Jewish state, something that was foreign to Chinese culture till the rise of Communism.

Rabbi Hillel Goldberg, publisher of Denver’s Intermountain Jewish News, and perhaps one of the finest Jewish journalists, said it best recently with this piece of wisdom:

“Temporization with dictators doesn’t work, morally or pragmatically. Beijing did not deserve to host the Olympics. The same spinelessness that gave them this honor would now have us sustain China’s honor without boycott, without a loud voice raised against injustice.”

Goldberg, unfortunately, was alone in these sentiments, but he was right on the mark.

Dr. David Clay Large, whose book “Nazi Games” was highlighted in last week’s column, wrote to me this week with an interesting observation.

“When, after much internal debate and controversy, the International Olympic Committee decided to allow the Hitler government to host the 1936 summer games, the committee promised that the prospect of hosting the games would liberalize Nazi Germany and even improve the situation of the Jewish population in that country. Of course, no such thing happened.

“Despite a momentary abatement of anti-Semitic measures during the games themselves, they resumed with redoubled fury in the late 30s.

“Now we have the 2008 summer games taking place in Beijing and once again, promises by the IOC and the Communist Chinese to improve China’s record in human rights and in the treatment of religious and ethnic minorities have not materialized; on the contrary, the government has cracked down on opposition forces and dissidents to prevent any ‘embarrassing incidents’ during the games.

Moreover, the successes of Chinese athletes at these games are being touted in China as ‘proof’ of the superiority of the Chinese ‘race.’ It all sounds very familiar.”

Very familiar, indeed, Dr. Large.

Let the truth be told: Communism is antithetical to Judaism. As an ideology, in theory, and in practice, it has far surpassed the horrors of Nazism and truly it can be said, Communism is at its base anti-tikkun olam in every sense.