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Jewish runners pulled from Berlin Games

Broadcast Date: July 26, 1976

After 10 days by boat over the Atlantic, nine days for training in Berlin and eight days into the 1936 Olympic Games, Marty Glickman was ready for the race of his life. But just four hours before the start of the men's 4x100-meter relay, the American sprinter and his teammate Sam Stoller – both Jewish – learned the race was already over for them. Alluding to a German plot to hide its best sprinters, the U.S. coaches substituted two others so that, they claimed, they would ensure an American victory.

In this CBC Radio interview 40 years later, Glickman says he believes one coach was a Nazi sympathizer who wanted to spare Adolf Hitler the embarrassment of seeing the German team bested by two Jewish runners.

Jewish runners pulled from Berlin Games

• The 1916 Olympic Games were to have been held in Berlin, but were cancelled due to the First World War, which began in 1914 and ended in 1918.

• Prior to the 1936 Games, Germany took steps to keep Jews out of the ranks of its Olympic team. The United States Amateur Athletic Union threatened a boycott, but in the end voted to send a team.

• According to the 2007 book Nazi Games: The Olympics of 1936, the Berlin Games were a craftily executed exercise in pro-Nazi propaganda. At the time, the Manchester Guardian described them as a “Nazi Party rally disguised as a sporting event.”

• Director Leni Riefenstahl's film about the 1936 Games, Olympia, has been hailed as a masterpiece of cinema for its pioneering techniques. See a CBC Archives clip in which Riefenstahl talks about the making of Olympia.

Jewish runners pulled from Berlin Games

Medium: Radio

Program: Olympic Magazine

Broadcast Date: July 26, 1976

Guest(s): Marty Glickman

Host: Harry Brown

Duration: 12:41

Photo: Marty Glickman, second from left, and Sam Stoller, second from right. Photo from frankwykoff.com

Last updated:
July 25, 2008