Germany is apparently keeping faith with the American Olympic Committee in her promise to permit Jewish athletes to train for the 1936 Olympics, it was asserted by General Charles H. Sherrill, former United States Ambassador to Turkey, and a member of the International Olympic Committee, on his arrival yesterday aboard the Ile de France.
General Sherrill has been in Europe since last April and spent much of the time in Germany.
“I went there to satisfy myself that Germany is carrying out her agreement not to exclude Jews from training for the Olympics,” General Sherrill said. “I found that Germany has already invited seventeen leading German Jewish athletes to train for the Olympics and they are training. I talked to several of them and they had no fear of later reprisals.”
ALL WON’T QUALIFY
General Sherrill pointed out, however, that not all of these seventeen could be expected to qualify.
“My job,” he said, “is to see that they get a chance to qualify and I shall do nothing else between now and 1936.”
Asked whether he saw Jewish athletes participating in training activities in Germany, the General snapped:
“You bet I did see them.”
General Sherrill was the member of the International Olympics Committee who, when it met a year ago last June, insisted that Germany put in writing her promise not to discriminate against Jews in the Olympics.
NO COMPLIANCE YET
He also revealed yesterday that the Nazi officials in charge of the Olympics training program have asked the two leading Jewish athletic associations in Germany, the Maccabis and the Jewish War Veterans, to suggest the names of more athletes who should be given training facilities.
Thus far, General Sherrill asserted, the associations have not complied with this request.
In discussing the matter of the seventeen athletes now in training, he advanced the following argument which has been used by German officials and other apologists for Nazi discrimination against Jews:
“Of course the seventeen men will have to qualify. In this connection it should be noted that there was no Jewish question in Great Britain two years ago and yet there was only one Jewish athlete on the British Olympic Team and on our American team of 448 only five of the athletes were Jewish.”
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.
