Avery Brundage, president of the American Olympic Committee, was yesterday authorized to visit Germany on behalf of the committee and investigate charges to the effect that Nazi policies have debarred Jewish athletes from participation in training for the 1936 Olympic games. The United States will decline to participate in the games if in Mr. Brundage’s Judgment Germany has not kept its pledge of complete freedom of opportunity for Jewish athletes.
Meeting yesterday at the New York Athletic Club, Seventh avenue and Fifty-ninth street, the committee responded to a motion made by Dietrich Wortmann asking that the United States accept Germany’s invitation for participation in the Olympic games, by agreeing almost to a man that discrimination charges would have to be investigated first hand.
Gustavus T. Kirby, treasurer of the committee, presented a resolution empowering Mr. Brundage to visit Germany. Seconded by Charles L. Ornstein, of the Jewish Welfare Board the resolution questioned the validity of recent German assurances as to the liberalism accorded Jewish athletes.
These assurances have come by cable to the American committee from Brigadier General Charles L. Sherrill and Colonel William May Garland, American members of the International Olympics Committee, as well as from Count Baillet-Letour, president of the I.O.C.
Repeatedly, however, newspaper reports and communications from private sources have influenced American committee members to doubt the authenticity of these reports.
Brundage will sail for Germany in the last week of July. He will also attend the meeting of the International Amateur Athletic Federation at Stockholm in August.
Ornstein told the Jewish Daily Bulletin yesterday that “Mr. Brundage is a square man and we have absolute confidence in his ability to learn whether Germany is really living up to its promises with regard to Jewish athletes.
“I know that on his return he will enable us to decide whether we are to accept Germany’s invitation to participate in the games scheduled in Berlin in 1936.”
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.
