General Charles H. Sherrill, American member of the International Olympic Committee and former U. S. ambassador to Turkey, today warned of an anti-Semitic wave in the United States that “won’t stop for twenty years” if the American Jews continue their agitation against U.S. participation in the Berlin Olympics.
In an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on board the French liner Normandie on which he returned from Paris, General Sherrill, declaring himself “a friend of the Jews,” warned that “if American youth gets the idea that 5,000,000 Jews are trying to use 125,000,000 Americans to pull their chestnuts out of the fire,” there will be a great outbreak of anti-Semitism.
He expressed himself as completely satisfied with the assurances given him by Reich Sports Commissar von Tschammer und Osten that Jewish athletes would not be discriminated against. It
was through his efforts, he said, in interviewing Hitler and Captain Tschammer-Osten that invitations were extended to Helene Mayer and Greta Bergmann to try out for the German team. He deplored the fact that instead of receiving the Jews gratitude he was being “pilloried.”
The International Olympic Committee, he continued, was completely satisfied by the fact that two Jewesses had been invited.
He hinted a Jew in the Department of Labor had actuated the American Federation of Labor resolution against the Berlin Olympics and said the Jews were “overplaying their cards.” It was the same “overplaying” of cards, he said, that was responsible for anti-Semitism in Germany.
An Amateur Athletic Union resolution to boycott the games, he held, would have absolutely no effect on American participation.
He gave no formal answer to a letter from the Committee on Fair Play in Sports presented to him by William B. Chamberlain, executive secretary, asking him to join the movement against American participation in the Olympics and attacking staging of the Olympics in Berlin on the ground of anti-Jewish and other minority discrimination.
Another attack on the Berlin games was made by Jeremiah T. Mahoney, president of the Amateur Athletic Union, who wrote to Dr. Theodor Lewald pointing out that his investigation had substantiated charges of discrimination and asking Dr. Lewald to resign because he was being used as a screen to conceal his government’s “most flagrant violations of the Olympic ideal of fair play for all.
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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.
