Test Integrity of Reich Pledge, A. J. C. Asks Olympic Group

Has Germany completely reversed its anti-Semitic policies or is it, for the sake of keeping the 1936 Olympic games in Berlin, merely playing ‘possum?

That’s the question that the American Jewish Congress wants the International Olympic Committee to decide through an impartial investigation of actual conditions in Germany. A request for such an investigation was yesterday forwarded to the American Olympic Committee, urging it to instruct its delegates, William May Garland and Brigadier General Charles Sherrill, to take steps towards accomplishment of that purpose.

The request, signed by Bernard S. Deutsch, president of the American Jewish Congress, was prompted by yesterday’s report of a statement made in Brussels by Dr. Theodor Lewald, the German representative on the Olympic Executive Committee. In the statement Dr. Lewald is reported to have given assurance that Germany not only would abide by her promise not to discriminate against German Jews at the 1936 games, but would even provide Jewish athletes with all facilities for training and competition. This statement, Dr. Lewald said, represents the official opinion of the Reich on the subject.

The communication to the American Olympic Committee questions the validity of the facts presented by Dr. Lewald and asserts that his statement of the Nazi government’s pledge that Jews would not be excluded would indicate that there has been a revolution in Germany and that Germany has completely reversed its anti-Jewish policy based on the Aryan paragraph.

Mr. Deutsch in his letter quotes the government’s decrees excluding Jews from training or participation in sports and asks that the question be raised whether these decrees have been rescinded. If they have been revoked, the letter demands, why has there been no official publicity given to the fact?

The communication sharply assails Dr. Lewald’s statement that few Jews have ever been on the teams of other countries, declaring that this is an attempt “to draw other nations into a sympathetic anti-Semitic association with Germany.” Disputing the accuracy of Dr. Lewald’s figures, the communication sees in their quotation an attempt to prove that there is discrimination against Jews in every country in the world and that Germany is not unique in this connection.

THE DOUBTFUL RATIO

In his reported pledge, which Dr. Lewald said he would make for the government when the German-Jewish problem comes up officially at the committee’s plenary meeting in Athens on May 16 to 19, Dr. Lewald claimed to have discovered that out of seventy-four British athletes who participated in the 1932 Olympics at Los Angeles only one was Jewish. He also pointed out that his research had disclosed to him that of 400 United States athletes at the same games, only five were Jews.

In the letter to the Olympic Committee, the American Jewish Congress points out thirteen specific anti-Jewish decrees that various official branches of the Nazi government promulgated and widely publicized between April 26, 1933 and March 12, 1934. The letter demands to know if any one of these decrees had been rescinded.

Referring to that part of the Lewald pledge in which he points to statistics supposedly proving presence of anti-Semitic discrimination among other nations in its handling of the Olympics, the letter states:

“This single paragraph, in our opinion, invalidates the sincerity of Dr. Lewald’s allegation with reference to the good will of his government to the Jews.

“We believe that the sense of sportsmanship of the American Olympic Committee,” the letter concludes, “will not permit this important matter, so inextricably bound up with the fundamental principle of sport, to be decided by default.”