MARTY GLICKMAN: We were aware of the fact that there was antisemitism in Germany, we
just didn’t know what Nazism was. Remember, this is from the perspective of two years
before Kristallnacht. The Holocaust was not only not a thought, it didn’t exist in our
imagination, in our dreams. I was on the team. It was a goal I had sought. “Holocaust”
was a word that I didn’t even know in 1936. The 400-meter relay was selected beforehand.
Sam Stoller would start, I was to run the second leg, Foy Draper run the third leg,
and Frank Wykoff run the anchor leg. The morning of the day we were supposed to run in the
trial meets, we were called into a meeting, the 7 sprinters were, along with Dean Cromwell,
the assistant head track coach, and Lawson Robertson, the head track coach, and Robinson
announced to the 7 of us, that he had heard very strong rumors, that the Germans were
saving their best sprinters, hiding them, to upset the American team in the 400-meter
relay, and consequently, Sam and I were to be replaced by Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe.
We were shocked, Sam was completely stunned, he didn’t say a word in the meeting. Watching
the final, all sorts of emotions flashed through my being. Frustration, certainly. Anger, certainly.
I look out on the track and I see Metcalfe passing runners down the backstretch he ran
the second leg. And, that should be me out there, that should be me, that's me out there.
Antisemitism was the basic reason, I believe, that Sam and I didn’t get to run in the
Olympic Games. Here were the great black athletes, who couldn’t be kept off the winning podium,
they were maulers. But here were two rather obscure Jewish American athletes, who could
be kept from the winning podium, so as not to further embarrass Adolf Hitler. But what
happened to me was as nothing compared to that which took place later on, there’s
just no comparison. I was there, and that mattered. What took place was much, much,
more important afterwards.
DR. GEORGE EISEN: Hitler attended the finals of the wrestling competition, between a German
champion and a Hungarian champion. The Hungarian champion happened to be Jewish. Karoly Karpati
beat the German champion decidedly. He was hailed as a national hero in Hungary, yet
during the Holocaust he was hauled to the Ukraine in a labor, forced-labor company,
which the Hungarians established. Very, very close to the famous Hungarian fencer Attila
Petschauer, he was an Olympic champion who died in the Holocaust. In order to kill a
human being, you have to dehumanize first. To create an image which is not human anymore.
So you have no compunction, or you have no issue to kill or eliminate. The Olympic Games
was a stepping stone of this exclusion, and, obviously, the 1936 Games provided the legitimacy
to the Nazi regime, which led later toward the Final Solution.