The seventy-two athletic organizations which comprise the American Olympic Association were warned Friday in a letter from Samuel Untermyer that they will place themselves “in the position of soliciting funds to pay for new barracks of the Hitler army” if they ask contributions to send American athletes to next year’s Berlin games.
The letter said the contributions are intended, in part, to defray the cost of the Olympic buildings and declared these structures “have been constructed by conscript labor and have been pledged to the Reichswehr following the games.”
Writing as the president of the Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League to Champion Human Rights, Untermyer concluded:
“Permit me to say that we cannot conceive of any self-respecting man … entering Germany or participating in these games on German soil so long as the persecutions that are being constantly intensified against Catholics, Protestants and Jews, organized labor and Masons, continue.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
