WRJ Lilith Salons - "Swimmers Against the Tide"

Our WRJ Lilith Salon met in two groups, one on September 2, and the second on September 12 to discuss articles from the Summer 2011 issue of Lilith magazine.  The main article discussed was "Swimmers Against the Tide" by Karen Propp.

The article tells of a group of Jewish girls who excelled at swimming and competed on behalf of Austria in the 1920's and 1930's in the shadow of Nazi Germany.  They swam for the "Hakoah Vienna Sports Club", which was founded in 1909 in Vienna.  This club was founded to promote athleticism among Jewish youth through competitive sports, as Jews were prohibited from joining non-Jewish sports clubs.  The premises of the sports club were confiscated by the Nazis in 1938.  The club name "Hakoah" was banned and Jewish athletes fled to other countries.

Previous to the closure of the club, several of the girls became swimming champions:  Hedy Bienenfeld, Fritzi Loewy, Ruth Langer and Judith Deutsch for Austria.

Hedy Bienenfeld

Our discussion included:

1.   The idea of the club promoting "muscular Judiasm" to counteract the stereotypes of Jews as not being good at sports.  Jewish men were perceived mainly as being scholars pouring over books.

2.  The lively social and cultural life of Vienna at that time and the belief of the Jews that they had blended in to Vienna society.  Which is course proved not to be the case when the Nazis arrived.  Some of the families of these Jewish woman swimmers thought competitive swimming was unladylike and disapproved of the club.

3.  The racey life of these women swimmers, some of whom had lots of lovers and carried on affairs. 

4.  The 1936 Berlin Olympics and the fact that three of these Jewish women swimmers were chosen to represent Austria at the Berline games.  Karen Propp states "Within the context of a heated international debate about whether attending the Olympics was tantamount to supporting Hitler's Germany, the three champions (Judith Deutsch, Ruth Langer and Luci Goldner), announced in the press their painful and prescient decision to boycott the Berlin Olympics." 

Fritzi Löwy, Lucie Goldner, Hedy Bienenfeld-Wertheimer and their trainer Zsigo Wertheimer

One of Hakoah's greatest achievements was getting thousands of the club members out of Austria when, in March, 1938, the Nazis took Austria.

A documentary film telling the story of these Jewish women swimmers from the Hakoah Vienna Club has been made by Yaron Zilberman.  The film is called "Watermarks" and starts off with a group of these Jewish women swimmers in their 80s revisting Vienna which leads in to uncovering their story through their conversations.  Our Lilith Salon has ordered this documentary film for viewing by our members.

At our Lilith Salons we were joined by a Jewish woman who had competed for Canada in swimming events at the 1972 Munich Olympics. She related her memories of being part of the group of competitive swimmers, and her feelings at being at Olympic games in Germany, and the emotional shock of the terrorist attack against the Israeli athletes, known as the "Munich Massacre".