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Oral history interview with Marty Glickman

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1996.A.0456.4 | RG Number: RG-50.429.0004

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    Oral history interview with Marty Glickman
    Transcript
    [TONE]
    Marty, I'd like you to begin by telling me your name, where
    you were born, date of birth.
    My name is Martin Irvin Glickman.
    I'm usually referred to as Marty Glickman.
    I was born in the Bronx.
    At the age of six, I moved to Brooklyn.
    I was raised in Brooklyn.
    And what year were you born?
    I was born in 1917.
    My parents came from Romania.
    They came over about 1912.
    I don't remember exactly when.
    I wasn't around when they got here.
    But I was born in 1917, lived originally in the Bronx.
    Could you tell me a little bit about your childhood
    and your family?
    My father was not an extremely religious person.
    As a matter of fact, he was Jewish.
    We observed the high holy days.
    Occasionally on Shabbos, we'd go to synagogue, only
    occasionally.
    My grandfather and grandmother on my mother's side
    kept a kosher home with the two sets of dishes and silverware
    and things like that.
    I was a bar mitzvahed.
    I went to Hebrew school.
    And I raised my own children in the Jewish faith.
    And my two sons were bar mitzvahed.
    My two daughters were not bat mitzvahed.
    But we have a Jewish background, a Hebrew background.
    Was that very important to you as a boy?
    It wasn't very important in terms of my grand feeling
    about Judaism.
    I was like any other kid.
    I was brought up in Jewish neighborhoods,
    mixed neighborhoods actually.
    We lived amongst Italians and Irish.
    Why don't you start that again, because you sort of
    conflicted yourself?
    What kind of a neighborhood were you
    brought up in, demographically?
    I was brought up in a mixed neighborhood.
    I was brought up in a mixed Irish, Italian,
    and Jewish neighborhood.
    There certainly were as many Jewish boys
    around with whom I played as there
    were people of other faiths.
    And I didn't feel unusual about being a Jew.
    Many of my friends went to Hebrew school with me.
    And many of my classmates in school were Jews.
    It was nothing out of the ordinary
    being Jewish in my neighborhood.
    And you didn't feel any antisemitism
    from the non-Jewish kids?
    Occasionally, we'd get into a fight.
    I had an older cousin, , who was a big strong young man.
    And he fought with an Italian boy
    one day because he was called a Jew bastard.
    And he got into a fight.
    And I'm pleased to say, that my cousin won the fight.
    But I never actually struck a blow
    because I was called a Jew bastard or anything like that.
    As I say, I was amongst Jews most of the time.
    I want to fix this Band-Aid.
    Would you stop for a second.
    Five seconds.
    So you really never felt in any way slighted
    because you were Jewish or you never saw that as something
    that you have to rally against?
    I never felt as though I had to overcome
    the fact that I was a Jew.
    I was aware, however, that I was Jewish.
    And the great athletes of the day, Benny Leonard
    was my father's hero.
    Another great prizefighter named Leach Cross was a man
    that he admired greatly.
    And Hank Greenberg was one of my early heroes.
    So I was aware of Jewish athletes and Jewish competitors
    who did well.
    I wanted to do well also to show that a Jew could do just
    as well, perhaps better, than anybody else.
    So there was that distinction.
    How important were sports?
    And how did you get involved in sports?
    I got involved in sports because I was always
    the fastest kid on the block.
    I could run faster than anybody else could run.
    And I found this true until I ran against Jesse Owens.
    He was the one fellow I couldn't beat, never did beat him.
    But other than that, I was, as I say, the fastest kid around.
    And because of that I had an advantage in any sport
    I played.
    So I played punch ball and box ball and ringolevio,
    the games kids played in the Bronx and Brooklyn
    in those days.
    And when I started playing basketball or baseball
    or football, because I had the speed, I had an advantage.
    And so I could be perhaps better than some of the other guys.
    I could almost steal first base in baseball.
    So you started sports at a fairly early age?
    I started sports, I started my first running
    when I was five years of age, I think.
    We used to run around the block.
    And we'd start in opposite directions.
    I and my opponent would run off around the block.
    And we'd come back to the same spot.
    And the first one returned to that spot was the winner.
    And the older guys in the neighborhood
    would match me against some of the older boys
    there, because I could beat the fellows my age rather handily.
    And I almost never lost.
    I don't remember losing a race, until I ran against Jesse.
    Now when did this running and sort of neighborhood sports
    become sports in a more organized fashion?
    Sports for me became more organized
    when I went to junior high school, Montauk Junior High
    School in Brooklyn.
    And I played on four different teams.
    I was a catcher on the baseball team.
    I played on the basketball team.
    We won a city championship in basketball,
    also won a city championship in baseball.
    I ran on a track team, and I was the field day champion.
    I was the fastest runner in the school.
    And of all things, I swam on the swimming team.
    And in those days, athletes played all sports in season.
    In the spring and summer, you played baseball.
    In the fall, you played football.
    In the wintertime, you played basketball.
    And all year round, you ran.
    I don't ever remember walking as a young person.
    I always ran.
    It was just my nature to run.
    So sports were very important to you it seems.
    Sports were critical to me.
    My life was built around sports.
    And I think it began when I started
    reading the Merriwell books.
    Now, those of you who are my age may well
    remember the Merriwell books.
    They were written by Burt L. Standish.
    And Frank Merriwell was the premiere hero.
    He had a younger brother named Dick Merriwell,
    who also was a great athlete.
    And Frank Merriwell married and had
    a son named Frank Merriwell Jr, who also was a great athlete.
    And I wanted to be like Frank Merriwell, junior or senior,
    or Dick Merriwell.
    And the exploits of the book I started reading them, I guess,
    when I was 12 years of age.
    And I wanted to duplicate those exploits.
    He ultimately went to Yale, became an All-American football
    player, basketball player, a champion
    in all the sports he participated in,
    and a well-rounded All-American type person.
    I wanted to be Frank Merriwell.
    I still remember his girlfriend's name whom
    he married, her name was Inez.
    I married a person named Marjorie,
    but I met her in high school.
    So it was my goal to be like Frank Merriwell,
    this fictional character.
    And your goal was to be this quintessential All-American
    guy?
    Yes that's right.
    I wanted to be the as good as I possibly could be in sports
    and also be a good student, because Frank Merriwell was
    a good student.
    I wound up being, I would say, a B student.
    I never had problems passing courses in school.
    I was a fair student.
    So there is actually one story I'm curious about.
    When you talk about how active you are in sports
    and how they really were your life at that point,
    did you think that you had a future in sports,
    that you might be thinking in terms of Olympics
    or an athletic career?
    I never thought in terms of having a future in sports.
    I never aspired, for example, to be a sports announcer.
    That came through the good day, I had the best day I ever had,
    on a football field.
    But the only reference I recall as
    to having aspirations in sports was in my junior high school
    graduating year when I was all of 14 years of age.
    My homeroom teacher, a man named Hugh Brown, who
    is an alumnus of Yale, wrote in my yearbook,
    "Be seeing you in the 1936 Olympics."
    And I thought that was very nice.
    I was a fast runner in school.
    But I was only 14.
    I didn't think in terms of the Olympic games.
    But he predicted it.
    After you read that, did you think, aha, maybe
    that is where I'm going or is that something I
    should aspire to?
    I didn't think in terms of the Olympic games
    until I was well into my freshman year
    at Syracuse University.
    I was a schoolboy champion.
    I was a sprinter.
    I was the city champion, the state champion,
    the national sprint champion.
    But I didn't think in terms of the Olympic games,
    because I was still a kid.
    I was 17.
    And only in my freshman year when
    I began to win against important competition
    did I realize I had a chance to make the team.
    And when I won the Metropolitan Championships
    in New York City and then the Eastern Olympic trials
    up at Harvard against a great sprinter
    named Ben Johnson, when I beat Ben--
    he was the world's record holder at 60 yards indoors--
    and when I beat him I realized then, just,
    a month before the Olympic games,
    that I had a chance to make the Olympic team.
    I want to ask you to repeat one sentence about the whole thing
    when you said something about not until I was in my freshman
    year.
    Can you say not until I was in my freshman year in college?
    Not until my freshman year in college
    did I realize that I had a chance
    to make the Olympic team.
    I was a high school champion, New York City sprint
    champion for several years, and New York state champion.
    I was also the National interscholastic schoolboy
    champion.
    And I knew I could run fast, but I
    didn't know how fast until I ran against some of the better
    sprinters in America and was able to beat them,
    particularly a fellow from Columbia
    named Ben Johnson, an outstanding sprinter.
    He was the world's record holder at 60 yards indoors.
    And when I beat Ben, beat him a couple of times,
    I realized I had a shot for the Olympic team.
    And that was at the end of my freshman year at Syracuse.
    Now having all of a sudden this thought or goal,
    was there anything different about being
    a Jewish American athlete than just
    being another great athlete?
    In my high school years and my junior high school years,
    there was nothing different about being
    a Jewish high school athlete, certainly not in New York City.
    I competed against everyone.
    And I felt no different than other athletes in school.
    It was only in my freshman year at Syracuse University
    that I became aware of the fact that I might have been a little
    bit different when at my first training table
    meal as a freshman, I asked, at lunch, the very first meal,
    please, pass the lamb chops.
    And everyone laughed at the table,
    because they weren't lamb chops.
    They were pork chops.
    So I realized then I was a little bit different than most
    of the other guys on the football squad.
    Did it motivate you differently?
    Did you think about it differently when you competed?
    I was always aware of the fact that I'm
    a Jew, never unaware of it under virtually all circumstances.
    And even in the high school competitions and certainly
    at college and for the Olympic team,
    I wanted to show that a Jew could do just
    as well as any other individual, no matter what
    his race, creed, or color, and perhaps even better.
    And it wasn't until the circumstance developed
    in the Olympic games when I was refused the opportunity
    to run in the games because of the fact I'm Jewish.
    Now at this time, you're a little bit older,
    you're a little bit smarter about what's
    going on in the rest of the world.
    Were you more aware of the restrictions applied to Jews?
    I mean, in your community growing up, it was very mixed.
    It didn't seem to be an issue.
    But were you aware that there was antisemitism in America,
    that you couldn't go everywhere you wanted to,
    and that sort of thing?
    I was certainly aware of the fact
    that there was antisemitism.
    My grandfather and my father, my uncles,
    told me about the pogroms in Europe, in Romania.
    They'd heard about the pogroms in Poland
    as well and in other parts of Europe and Russia.
    And I was aware of antisemitism.
    In New York City, I was also aware of the fact
    that there were certain places I was not welcome.
    I might go into a hotel, for example,
    and see a small sign where you registered, which read,
    "restricted clientele," which meant in effect no Jews,
    no Blacks allowed.
    There were certain areas around New York City
    where you couldn't live, like Darien, Connecticut,
    for example, was a place where Jews were not permitted
    to own homes in Darien.
    And I was aware of that.
    My folks would tell me, my in-laws later on
    told me about the reservations they made at hotels.
    And my father in law's name was Dorman,
    and neither Jewish nor Gentile, he
    would try to check into a hotel having made a reservation
    at some resort and being turned away when they found out
    he was Jewish.
    He might check in as Jack Dorman, which he was.
    But his friends and associates might
    have names like Golberg or Cohen or Goldstein,
    and the group was turned away upon occasion.
    So I was aware.
    I was aware of antisemitism in New York
    and throughout the country as well.
    How much in the early '30s did you
    know about what was going on in Europe and Germany
    in particular?
    I knew practically nothing about what
    was going on in Germany specifically and in Europe
    generally, except that I'd heard about the pogroms in Eastern
    Europe, basically, as I mentioned,
    in Romania and Poland and Russia.
    But I was not specifically aware until my freshman
    year at Syracuse when, as a political science major,
    I began to learn of the antisemitism
    that some of the fascist countries
    were subjecting Jews to, particularly in Nazi Germany.
    There was antisemitism in Germany, I knew that.
    And there was antisemitism in America.
    The Nuremberg laws, as I understand it,
    were passed in 1933.
    I was aware that there--
    I think '35.
    There were restrictions from '33--
    I'm sorry.
    I'll let you start over.
    Yes.
    I was aware of the Nuremberg laws,
    which were passed in 1935.
    Hitler had come to power in 1933.
    As a political science major at Syracuse University,
    I was aware of those antisemitism laws.
    But these were merely on the books,
    like the laws perhaps of not going to certain hotels,
    not going into certain areas, the unwritten laws, or the law
    about not crossing against a red light
    if you're crossing the street.
    They were not seriously spoken of nor seriously taken
    in the States.
    We were aware of it.
    But how they affected individuals, I didn't know.
    And you didn't have any family in Europe still?
    At that time, the family I had in Europe
    were my father's brothers, who lived in Romania
    and were still there.
    But I didn't know how they were affected by it at all.
    OK.
    It's just interesting to know what you knew
    before going over to Germany.
    Tell me about qualifying for the Olympics.
    How did that come about?
    I qualified for the Olympic games
    by winning a series of races to qualify
    for the final trials, which are held at Randall's Island in New
    York City, the first use of that Randall's Island stadium
    for track and field championships.
    I qualified by winning the Metropolitan Championships
    and then the Eastern qualifying round
    up at Harvard stadium in Boston.
    There were Eastern, Near Midwestern, Western,
    and Far Western trials.
    And I was the winner of the sprint in the East.
    So I qualified for the final round.
    It was a series of qualifying rounds.
    And I and about, I would guess, 14 other sprinters
    qualified for the final round.
    And in that final round, I qualified and made the team.
    How did you place in final rounds?
    What happened there.
    The placement in the final round, in the actual finals,
    I qualified by finishing second in that semifinal heat
    at Randall's Island.
    And I'd like to tell the story of my first race
    against Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalf.
    These were the two great Black sprinters of the day.
    We drew marbles, which were numbered,
    for the lanes in which you ran.
    I drew lane number 5.
    Jesse Owens was in lane number 4.
    Ralph Metcalf was in lane number 6.
    And I'm in number 5.
    So here is Owens the world's champion alongside of me,
    Metcalf who'd run and won a silver in the 1932
    Olympic games on the other side.
    These two magnificent athletes on either side of me, and I'm
    scared stiff.
    I mean I was shaking so that when the starter called us
    to our marks, to put our feet in the starting holes--
    we didn't use starting blocks in those days.
    You dug holes with the trowel.
    When I started to put my front foot my left foot in the hole,
    my foot was shaking so, I could not put my foot
    in that starting hole.
    It was just vibrating so.
    I couldn't put it down.
    And all six additional sprinters on either side of me
    were on their marks getting ready to go.
    And I'm still standing there shaking.
    And the starter called everyone up and called me over to him.
    I knew the man.
    He started me in some of the high school races I had run.
    And he said, Marty, walk up and down a bit,
    take a few deep breaths, relax, jog up and down, relax,
    and we'll try to start again.
    And after several minutes, I was calmed down sufficiently
    to get my foot into that starting hole, both feet in,
    and we raced.
    I don't remember the gun going off.
    We were set, terribly tense of course, on a marks,
    and then set.
    And then I was running.
    And there was Owens on my left and Metcalf on my right.
    And for 40 yards, I'm running even with them.
    And then suddenly, as though they were on an escalator
    and I was not, they were pulling ahead and moving ahead.
    And I fought as best I could.
    And I kept dropping back.
    And then I realized I wasn't going
    to catch either one of them.
    And I thought I finished third in the race.
    So much so that, Ted Husing-- he was broadcasting the race
    on the infield in the track.
    He was the leading track and field broadcaster at the time.
    Ted called me over after the race and said here's
    Marty Glickman, the kid from Brooklyn who finished third.
    Oh, wait a second, he said.
    I see they've placed Frank Wykoff third.
    Marty finished fourth.
    And he interviews Frank.
    And then he says, now, here's Mart-- oh-- just a moment,
    he says.
    They've placed Foy Draper in the fourth place.
    Marty finished fifth.
    So interviewed Foy Draper and then he
    interviewed me finishing fifth, which is where I was placed.
    I was a bit upset about that.
    Films of the race indicate that I
    beat Foy Draper by a foot, very little question about that.
    As for Frank and myself, you could
    choose the winner between the two of us,
    but I didn't know whether I beat Frank or not, nor did he.
    Later in Paris, in a post-Olympic meet,
    I beat Frank.
    But we were virtually in a dead heat for third place.
    So I do remember Dean Cromwell finishing--
    it's too long already.
    Yeah, I guess I'm asking like was there something
    that happened there that was--
    Well, Dean Cromwell leads to another story,
    which has to do with the selection, my ouster
    from the team.
    So if you can fit this in--
    As we finish the race, I noted that Dean Cromwell,
    the assistant head track coach of the American Olympic team
    and the head track coach at the University of Southern
    California was in amongst the officials,
    arguing with them that Frank Wykoff had finished third
    and Foy Draper had finished fourth,
    because he was the coach of Southern Cal
    and Wykoff and Draper ran for Southern Cal, or had run--
    Wykoff was graduated-- had run for Southern Cal.
    These were his boys.
    And he pushed them amongst the officials
    as finishing third and fourth.
    And I was placed fifth.
    I don't know whether I finished third, fourth, or fifth.
    I just don't know.
    But I do know that Dean Cromwell had
    a hand in the placement of the order of finish.
    And you think it was clearly favoritism, not the fact
    that you were a Jew?
    I think it was clearly favoritism
    that he wanted his boys placed third and fourth.
    The fact that I was Jewish I think
    did not matter at that time.
    He wanted his boys in there.
    And I had made the team anyhow, because the first seven
    men were to make the team.
    The first three finishers running the 100 meter
    run, and the next four finishers making up the 400 meter relay.
    So I had made the team.
    Any other Jews on the team?
    The other Jew on the track team, one other Jew, was Sam Stoller.
    Stoller was placed sixth in the 100 meter final.
    He finished behind me.
    He ran a poor race.
    Later Sam beat me in the Olympic Village in a trial race
    we had amongst the three of us.
    Sam Stoller finishing first, I was beaten by a shoulder
    by Sam.
    And we both beat Foy Draper.
    Foy Draper wound up running on the team.
    We'll get to that.
    OK.
    Now, after you qualify for the Olympic team,
    what sort of preparation was there between those
    qualifying rounds at Randall's Island and going to Berlin?
    We qualified for the Olympic team on a Friday.
    And we were on board the ship, I believe, on Tuesday
    heading for Berlin.
    It was almost immediate.
    We were measured for our uniforms.
    There were several events we attended,
    several ceremonies we attended.
    And we were aboard ship within three days
    after making the team.
    It was very quick.
    There was no training period or anything like that.
    We stayed in shape, of course.
    We kept working out every day to make
    sure we were in good condition.
    And we took the SS Manhattan for Berlin.
    I mean this sounds pretty exciting.
    I don't know how much you traveled before then.
    But winning these rounds and then a few days later
    being on a boat going to Europe sounds like a big deal.
    This was quite an experience for me.
    I had been no farther north than Boston.
    I'd been no farther South than Philadelphia until that time.
    I was this 18-year-old kid from Brooklyn.
    I was the second youngest kid on the team, on the track team.
    And here I was aboard this magnificent liner
    heading for Europe.
    And it was a most exciting time.
    It was wonderful.
    It was thrilling.
    It was great.
    It was fulfilling my Frank Merriwell dream partially.
    What was it like on the boat?
    The boat was informal.
    It was fun.
    We trained aboard the ship.
    It was a 5-day crossing and a sixth day getting to Hamburg
    and then down to Berlin by train.
    But we had no opportunity to really sprint aboard ship.
    So we did calisthenics.
    We jogged up and down.
    We did a good deal of walking aboard ship.
    We watched our diet fairly carefully.
    There was no specific training regimen,
    because we were all pretty good athletes, had
    our own different coaches and coaching techniques
    applied to us for months and years beforehand.
    So we were not concerned with being
    directed by the coaches who were on the team.
    It was a fun time.
    It was a time that was loose and easy and pleasant
    and we look forward with great anticipation
    to getting to Europe and getting in competition.
    Change the tape.
    I want to backtrack for a moment.
    Prior to your going to Berlin, do you
    remember any conversation, any newspaper articles,
    any talk of America boycotting the Olympics
    because of what was going on already in Germany?
    At the time we were competing in the regional finals and then
    the finals at Randall's Island.
    The talk was so slight that I truly
    was not aware of the possibility of a boycott of the 1936 Games.
    It had very little play in the press if any.
    I don't remember seeing it in the newspapers
    or hearing it on the radio.
    As a matter of actual fact, no Jewish organization,
    like B'nai B'rith or ADL or the American Jewish Congress,
    if there was an AJC, no Jewish organization
    nor any individual ever said to me, Marty, don't go.
    There was no talk, general talk of boycott.
    I know now that there was a vote taken
    involving the AAU, the Amateur Athletic
    Union, and the American Olympic Committee,
    and that they voted to go.
    But there was no such publicity or promotion
    such as existed in 1980, when the President of the United
    States, Jimmy Carter, strongly recommended that we don't
    participate in the 1980 games.
    There was no such popular movement at that time in 1936.
    And you weren't aware that there were
    athletes who had decided not to go on their own.
    I was not aware of any athletes who decided not to go.
    I know now that athletes say they decided not to go.
    There was a fine sprinter whom I never met, never ran against,
    a fellow named Herman Neugass of Tulane,
    who determined that he was not going to try out for the team.
    He didn't go.
    He didn't try out for the team.
    But I knew that in later years.
    So this was just not an issue.
    The fact of going or not going was not
    an issue, not as far as I was concerned,
    nor in terms of the public press or the populace generally.
    We didn't think in terms of not going.
    I want you tell me about the trip over,
    the anticipation, what it was like being on the boat.
    Being on the boat was fun.
    Being on the boat was a brand new experience, particularly
    for a kid from Brooklyn, or any of us who'd never been abroad.
    I'd been no farther North than Boston.
    I'd been no farther South than Philadelphia.
    And here I was, an 18-year-old kid from Brooklyn,
    heading for Europe.
    It had been a name, a place my parents came from,
    going to Germany and visiting other countries as well.
    Our first stop, for example, was in Ireland with a ship,
    just stopping there and seeing it in the distance,
    and how beautifully green it was.
    We stopped in England momentarily at Plymouth.
    And I couldn't see the Plymouth Rock or anything like that,
    but it was Plymouth, England.
    And then we went across to Germany, landed in Hamburg.
    And from Hamburg, took the train down into the heart of Berlin,
    to the huge Banhof in Berlin.
    What was going on on that boat?
    What was the mood?
    People were, I assume, fairly excited.
    All of us were pleased at having made the team.
    And the boat was wide open.
    In those days, a huge ship like the Manhattan
    had different classes, first class, second class,
    cabin class, or whatever, steerage even.
    But we had the run of the boat.
    And we ate in what amounted to the second class dining room.
    We were not in the top categories of dining room.
    We had huge menus to choose from.
    We were not given training table food.
    We selected our own foods.
    There was a fellow on the team named
    Tarzan Brown, a Narragansett Indian from Maine who'd never
    seen a menu like this before.
    And Tarzan was a marathon runner.
    He weighed perhaps 130 pounds--
    A great marathon runner, he'd won the Boston Marathon--
    on the team.
    And we had this huge menu.
    And every meal, every day, he ate the menu from top
    to bottom.
    I mean, six out appetizers, and two or three soups,
    and four main courses.
    In those six days, on the ship, he
    might have put on between 10 and 11 pounds.
    He ran the first mile of the marathon,
    and then he sat by the wayside and gave it all up.
    How were you spending your time on the boat?
    We spend our time on the boat talking, working out,
    calisthenics mostly, jogging up and down on some of the very
    short straightaways on deck.
    There was no facility to really work out
    the way we would ordinarily on a cinder track or a clay track,
    certainly no quarter mile track aboard ship.
    But we stretched, we jogged, we walked, we did exercises,
    and we talked, and we read.
    And generally it was a group of guys having a good time
    together.
    There were women on the team as well,
    but I guess I was not involved nor interested in any
    of the women.
    I had a girlfriend who later became my wife.
    Was there any special camaraderie
    amongst the few Jewish athletes on the boat?
    There was no special camaraderie amongst the Jewish athletes,
    except a warm friendship that I developed with a baseball
    player Herman Goldberg, who was a catcher on the exhibition
    baseball team.
    There was no international baseball competition.
    America was practically the only place where baseball
    was played in those days.
    So it was a demonstration, an exhibition team,
    and he was on the team, and on the Olympic team,
    Herman was, a catcher on the team.
    We hit it off very nicely.
    But usually with the athletes from the different sports,
    the track athletes stayed together, the gymnasts
    were together, the swimmers were together.
    Not that we didn't fraternize with each other,
    but we had much more in common with each other.
    And so we were buddies amongst our own teammates
    within the Olympic team.
    And when you say you talked a lot, what did you talk about?
    What it was going to be like in Berlin competing or?
    We didn't talk about what Europe was going to be like.
    We talked mostly about America.
    We talked about baseball and football
    and particularly about track and field.
    We told stories.
    We swapped yarns.
    We were-- how can I say it best--
    a bunch of guys who enjoyed each other.
    We had enormous respect for each other.
    And I, as one of the younger fellows on the team,
    looked up to some of the older men, who were not
    only older but bigger and stronger than I.
    And it was just a very pleasant time,
    a group of young men being with each other,
    enjoying the sea voyage, enjoying each other's company.
    Did you think about the fact that you
    were representing the United States in the Olympics?
    It's rather unusual for me or any athlete
    to say that we represented America.
    I didn't feel as though I represented the USA.
    I represented me.
    I was glad I was on the team.
    It was a goal I had sought.
    It was an achievement for me.
    It was an individual thing.
    After all, the Olympic games, in theory,
    and I strongly believe this, are for the individual,
    for the excellence of the individual.
    And theoretically, though we wear national uniforms,
    we don't represent the different countries
    whose uniforms we wear.
    We represent athletics, we represent sports--
    we compete in sports for sports' sake.
    The competition is all important.
    Winning is not important.
    Baron de Coubertin, who founded the modern Olympic games,
    insisted, has been quoted many times
    as saying, winning is not the goal of the Olympic games,
    taking part, participating, is what the Olympic games are all
    about.
    So it wasn't as though we were going there
    to win for the United States.
    That was a thought that was perhaps
    in the back of our minds.
    It was not a conscious thought.
    We were going there as athletes, not necessarily as Americans.
    I was going there as a Jewish American athlete, but as
    an athlete basically.
    A Jew, an American, and an athlete.
    What's the reality of what you're
    saying, that there are, theoretically,
    no national lines-- there are no politics in the Olympics.
    I mean, that certainly isn't my perception.
    People say that there are politics in the Olympic games.
    I say hogwash.
    I say nonsense.
    Where does politics fit in When you
    run 100 meters or 1,500 meters or put the shot
    or even played basketball against each other?
    What politics are involved?
    The first man across the finish line
    wins, no matter what the race.
    The man who puts the shot a longer distance than any other
    is the gold medal winner, or spins the discus,
    or throws the javelin, or whatever the event.
    There are no politics amongst the athletes.
    You talk about politics amongst the nations, certainly.
    But not as far as the Olympic games are concerned.
    They don't exist politics are not involved
    in terms of winning and losing.
    [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] right?
    Well, clearly nations have used those gold medals
    in a political framework.
    I don't believe that at all.
    I don't believe that having medal winners
    for a particular country means anything
    to that country in terms of anything
    important, anything solid.
    After all, the East Germans were terrific, as long
    as East Germany insisted, and they
    sought and worked hard to develop great Olympic athletes.
    And the Soviet Union won many, many medals, dominated
    a couple of Olympic Games.
    And certainly the Italians to some extent
    won many Olympic events, as well as other fascist countries
    doing well and centered their interest in the Olympic games.
    And where is the Soviet Union today?
    Where are the East Germans today?
    Where is Nazi Germany today?
    They just don't exist anymore.
    And Nazi Germany won more medals in the '36
    games than the United States did, 33 to 26.
    Although they won medals for dressage,
    and for pistol shooting, and rifle shooting, and things
    like that.
    I don't see the importance of international athletics
    in terms of politics at all.
    They say that the governments use it,
    but even the successful Olympic teams
    like Germany, and East Germany, and the Soviet Union,
    where are they?
    What good did it do them?
    Well, except-- and I don't necessarily need to belabor
    this--
    for that in 1936 Germany's success
    is not only in presenting the Olympics
    but in also winning a lot of medals
    may have been an encouragement, may have spurred them
    on in ways at that time.
    Many people say that the '36 Olympic games
    were the Nazi Olympics or Hitler's Olympic Games.
    I say they were Jesse Owens's Olympic games.
    The myth of Nazi Aryan supremacy was smashed to smithereens
    by the great non-Aryan athletes, black athletes,
    wonderful black athletes, won the 100, the 200, the 400,
    the 800, the long jump, the high jump,
    medalled in many other events as well.
    It was the Olympic Games of Jesse Owens, not of
    Adolf Hitler.
    Jesse was idolized by the German population.
    He couldn't walk into the stadium
    using the regular players' entrance into the stadium.
    He had to be secreted into the stadium.
    He had to use a secret entrance to get in.
    Otherwise he'd been mobbed by the idolizing German population
    or whoever the spectators were-- and they were mostly Germans--
    in the 120,000 seat stadium.
    It was Jesse Owens's Olympics as far as I was concerned
    and I think as far as the world was concerned.
    And it certainly proved that this Aryan business
    of supremacy was ridiculous.
    These were non-Aryans winning the most important events.
    Let's go back to your story now.
    So you had this terrific boat ride over.
    And tell me about your arrival, and getting
    to Berlin, and all of that.
    We arrived at the Bahnhof in Berlin at midday,
    and a huge crowd was there--
    Let me just stop you.
    You arrived on the boat in Hamburg, yes?
    Yes.
    Was there anybody there to greet you?
    We went right to the train.
    OK.
    Nothing happened [INAUDIBLE].
    All right.
    There was a huge crowd waiting for us
    at the Bahnhof in Berlin, this huge railroad station.
    Newspapermen, camera people with the newsreels, photographers,
    fans, officials of all sorts, uniforms of all sorts--
    huge crowd waiting on the platform when we arrived.
    And as we got off the train and milled about on the platform,
    I felt a tap on my shoulder.
    And I turned and saw a smallish looking
    young man in his mid-20s, obviously an American
    as soon as he talked to me, and he said to me,
    are you Marty Glickman?
    I said, yes.
    He said, you're Jewish, aren't you?
    I said, yes, I am, slightly taken aback.
    I said, why do you ask?
    He said, well I'm Jewish also.
    I said, you're Jewish?
    What are you doing here?
    He says, I'm going to med school here in Berlin.
    I said, you're going to med school here in Germany?
    He said, yes.
    I couldn't get into an American med school.
    So the feeling I had of Berlin being very much
    like New York in it's antisemitism
    or its lack of antisemitism was similar to New York and Berlin.
    It was the same sort of city, I thought, particularly
    as a result of this conversation with this young man going
    to med school.
    What did he tell you about the political climate in Germany
    as a Jew?
    I asked him, what was it like for you as a Jew
    here in Germany?
    He says, well, in Berlin, I go practically unnoticed.
    Nobody knows that I'm Jewish.
    I'm going to med school here.
    In the shtetls, in the smaller cities around Germany,
    there are problems.
    But now, during the Olympic Games
    and leading up to the Olympic Games, everything is quiet.
    Nothing seems to be going on in terms of antisemitism.
    And as far as my being here in Berlin, I'm just like anybody
    else here in Berlin.
    I'm going to med school.
    All of these people who greeted you at the train station
    in Berlin, were they carrying swastikas?
    Was there any of that?
    There was a huge number of uniformed individuals.
    I noticed, and we commented about it, my teammates and I,
    about the fact that there seemed to be no men under the age
    of approximately 35--
    no young men-- who were not in one uniform or another.
    They were wearing either gray, or green,
    or brown in one uniform or another.
    No young men in street clothes, in civilian attire,
    except those who are older than 35
    or obviously older than the age that we athletes were.
    Everyone seemed to be in uniform.
    As for banners and flags, they were all over the place
    and dominated by the swastika.
    The swastika was all over.
    On virtually every other banner we saw there was a swastika.
    But this was '36.
    This was before we really got to know what the swastika truly
    meant.
    This was two years before Kristallnacht.
    This was three years before the outbreak of the war.
    It was five years before the United States
    was involved in the war.
    So the swastika and those German flags,
    the black and red and white of the German flags,
    didn't mean very much to us except as a form of decoration.
    And it wasn't sort of an unnerving amount of patriotism?
    I've never been asked about the patriotism exhibited
    by the Germans at that time.
    It was a natural thing to see all these German flags.
    But flags of other Nations were exhibited as well.
    They rimmed the stadium, they were on the streets--
    there were many flags, mostly German.
    Most of those German flags contained the swastika.
    There seemed to be no outward display of patriotism
    except when Hitler walked into the stadium.
    He would walk into his box overlooking the field,
    and I was perhaps 50 to 75 feet away from Hitler's box,
    and he'd walk in, and the stands would rise,
    and you'd hear it in unison, sieg heil, sieg heil, all
    together-- this huge sound reverberating
    through the stadium.
    That was the patriotism, the German patriotism
    I saw, sieg heil with 120,000 people shouting it--
    or most of the 120,000 people.
    But that same shout of sieg heil was
    matched by the sound of Jesse Owens's name.
    Every time Owens came on the track,
    and he was on frequently because he ran in four different races,
    and qualifying times, and qualifying races for all those
    races, every time Jesse appeared on the track,
    the crowd would yell, "oh-vens," "oh-vens."
    the W in German as pronounced as a V,
    and they would shout, with the same amount of fervor
    it seemed, for Jesse as they sounded for sieg heil--
    "oh-vens," "oh-vens."
    It was a remarkable thing to see this marvelous black athlete
    saluted by 120,000 Germans.
    That's a great story.
    Though when Owens wasn't coming out of the field,
    was there anything alarming about this sieg heil in unison,
    120,000?
    I don't know how many people are actually shouting it,
    but what seemed like the entire stadium.
    I never felt as though there was anything alarming in terms
    of the sieg heil, a feeling of fear or anything like that.
    It was almost as though we in the States
    were singing the National anthem or stating the Pledge
    of Allegiance to our flag.
    It was fairly brief.
    Hitler would walk in with an entourage of Goring,
    and Goebbels, and Hesse, and Himmler, and Streicher,
    and take their seats in this box with Hitler in the middle,
    slightly forward of the rest of the group,
    and Goring with his resplendent, outlandish uniforms,
    wildly decorative, and Goebbels that rat-like face,
    and the rest.
    Hesse with that very dark beard that he had.
    They sat there.
    And Hitler particularly was extremely nervous
    when German athletes ran.
    He'd sit in this seat and rub his thighs
    and move back and forth as I'm doing now.
    And he was obviously very much involved in the race.
    And I thought he was nervous for his own athletes.
    When other athletes competed, he just sat there quietly
    and observed.
    He was thrilled, overjoyed, smiled,
    when German athletes went to the winning podium.
    When the black athletes went to the winning podium,
    Hitler was gone.
    As soon as a Black athlete won his gold medal
    and was going to the podium to receive it,
    the box would empty out.
    Hitler's box would empty out, they'd all be gone,
    and they would not pay homage to the great black athletes who
    were there.
    They stayed for the white athletes,
    but they left for the black athletes.
    I'm going to fix your Band-Aid.
    [INAUDIBLE]
    Marty, your tie--
    Oh, it's coming--
    Thank you.
    Are we rolling?
    We're back rolling.
    OK.
    OK.
    Now I want to know a little bit about what
    it was like being in Germany, the Olympic Village what
    that was like.
    Did you take little side trips into town or into other areas
    as a tourist?
    If you can tell me a little bit about the mood
    before the Olympics.
    The event I was supposed to run, the 400 meter relay,
    was one of the last events on the track and field program.
    The trials came on the penultimate day,
    and the final day of the games for track and field
    was the final of the 400 meter run.
    So I had plenty of time, and so did the other athletes,
    except for fellows like Jesse Owens and one
    or two others who competed in several events.
    I had plenty of time to go into Berlin during the morning hours
    usually or late in the afternoon, after the afternoon
    events took place.
    And I had my freedom throughout Berlin.
    I could hitch a ride if I chose to,
    get aboard a bus or a trolley, or whatever,
    because I was wearing an Olympic uniform.
    And I had Olympic identification of all sorts on me.
    And it was beautiful.
    It was lovely.
    I walked along Unter den Linden.
    I thought that Under den Linden--
    later I went to Paris and walked along the Champs-Élysées--
    I believed then that the Champs-Élysées was not
    as attractive as Unter den Linden in Berlin.
    But that was my own personal feeling about it.
    The Olympic Village was a beautiful campus
    of bungalows and low-lying houses
    which housed the various teams of the Olympic Games.
    And it was like a college campus.
    Slightly rolling low hills and dotted with these bungalows
    and different buildings there.
    There was a practice track.
    There was a swimming area, an indoor Natatorium.
    And we worked out at the practice track.
    The single most important thing I got from the Games
    was the fact that the other athletes of the world
    were just like me, and I was just like they.
    I worked out with Hungarian athletes,
    and Romanian athletes, and British athletes,
    French, Japanese athletes.
    We had many things in common, the things involving
    our sports.
    And I jogged alongside of the different athletes.
    I walked alongside of them in the village.
    We dined separately.
    Each team had its own portion of the dining room and rooms.
    But we were with each other, and we
    enjoyed each other's presence even though we couldn't
    communicate very well with most of the teams of the world,
    because I didn't speak their language
    and they didn't speak mine.
    I talk to the English of course and talk
    to those who spoke English.
    There was one Finn, a great Finnish athlete,
    named Gunnar Hockert.
    Gunnar was the 5,000 meter champion,
    a young man in his early 20s, who
    was a beautiful blonde, blue-eyed, apple-cheeked young
    man, and a great, great runner.
    He won the gold medal.
    And he spoke good English.
    And we spent a great deal of time
    with Gunnar, because he liked being
    with the American athletes, he liked speaking English,
    and we liked Gunnar.
    And to my shock and horror, he was
    killed in the Russian-Finnish war
    just a few years after the Olympic Games.
    But knowing him and knowing the other athletes,
    even just being with them for this limited amount of time,
    made me feel like one of them.
    And I think they felt like one of us.
    It was a wonderful education for all of us and me particularly.
    Did you mingle with German athletes?
    The German athletes usually stayed to themselves.
    The German athletes worked out together,
    worked out by themselves.
    They weren't as free, as loose, as easy
    as athletes from other countries of the world.
    Five seconds.
    You were saying that you had time before your event
    or your supposed event in the Olympics.
    And you were able to go into Berlin and all of that.
    In this, did you feel anything about the atmosphere?
    Was it charged?
    Did you see signs saying no Jews here?
    Did you experience any of what was to come?
    In my time in Germany, I felt and saw nothing overt.
    I saw no signs.
    I heard no verbiage of any sort.
    I speak a little German because of the Yiddish that I know.
    And I took some German at school.
    And I heard nothing and I saw nothing which was anti-Semitic
    in any way, except for the day that I
    was supposed to run the trial heats of the 400-meter relay.
    And that was the first and only anti-Semitism
    that I experienced.
    And I experienced it from American coaches
    and not from Germans.
    There was no overt sign of any anti-Semitic feeling
    or activity at all that I saw in Berlin
    or wherever I went in Germany.
    Now, Herman Goldberg, your pal at the Olympics,
    mentioned a trip into Berlin where
    I guess you hitched a ride with some German soldiers.
    What happened there?
    One of the ways of getting from the Olympic Village
    to the Olympic stadium, which was about eight miles distant
    from the Olympic Village, was to hitch a ride.
    And Herman Goldberg, my buddy, and I
    hitched a ride in what amounts to a German Army Jeep.
    And it was driven by a German Sergeant who
    looked like a Nazi Sergeant.
    And he sat alongside of his passenger,
    who was a very handsome blond Lieutenant in the German army--
    blond, blue-eyed, a most attractive looking man.
    And as we got into the Jeep, hitching the ride,
    they asked for our autographs.
    And we said, we'll give it to you when we get off the Jeep,
    which we did.
    We took these eight miles at what we thought
    was a reckless speed to begin with.
    We could see the speedometer going up to 70, 80, 90, 100--
    100 kilometers, we finally realized, and not 100 miles
    an hour, only half the speed.
    At any rate, we get to the Olympic stadium
    and they give us some paper to sign our names.
    And we scrawled our names--
    Herman Goldberg, Marty Glickman-- and left
    almost immediately.
    We didn't want to have them ask questions about our names--
    Goldberg, Glickman.
    Were we Jewish?
    Or do we have German-Jewish background or whatever?
    We were aware of the fact that we
    were with this German Lieutenant and this German Sergeant who
    looked every inch the typical Nazi army
    officer and under-officer.
    So you knew that there was potential for problems?
    We were aware of the fact that there
    was anti-Semitism in Germany.
    We were aware of the fact that these were obviously
    German soldiers, perhaps Nazis.
    But we thought all soldiers, certainly,
    were sympathetic to the Nazis.
    And 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.
    We didn't have nightmares about the Holocaust.
    It was a word that I didn't even know in 1936.
    Certainly, had we any inkling of what was going to happen,
    we wouldn't have been in Germany in the first place.
    But the feeling about anti-Semitism for me--
    and probably for Herman and the two other Jews
    whom I knew on the team.
    There was a fine basketball player named
    Sam Balter who was on the team.
    And Herman and I. And there was another Jewish athlete.
    The German athletes who I knew on the team
    were Herman Goldberg, who was my buddy much of the time,
    and Sam Stoller, who was my teammate
    on the 400-meter relay.
    And Sam Balter was a wonderful basketball player,
    a guard on the basketball team.
    And the four of us were the only Jews I was aware of.
    I understand now there were three other Jews who
    were on the American Olympic team,
    but I didn't know them then.
    I didn't know they were Jewish.
    But the four of them I knew-- the four of us
    were the Jews whom I knew.
    And we certainly were not aware of what was to come.
    I guess the whole world was not aware of what was to come.
    So Berlin was like any other big city, but very beautiful?
    Berlin was like any other big city.
    If I would use a single word to describe Berlin
    during that period of time, the word would be carnival.
    There was an atmosphere of carnival
    about Berlin, with the flags flying
    and the beautiful weather almost every day.
    It was golden.
    Fleecy white clouds occasionally overhead.
    Late in the day, on a couple of days,
    there was some rain at the stadium.
    But most of the time, it was just lovely.
    The city was immaculate.
    As I understand, it still is.
    And as I saw a couple of years ago,
    when I was back there again.
    And the people were well-dressed and seemingly well-fed.
    The beer flowed.
    And it was a carnival atmosphere.
    I want you to tell me about how you were basically
    dumped from the race.
    But I just wanted to ask you on the boat
    or in the Olympic Village, did you get
    to know John Woodruff at all.
    I knew John Woodruff slightly, from the various track meets
    in which we competed at the same time.
    He ran the half-mile.
    I was a sprinter running 100 meters
    and sometimes 200 meters.
    And John and I were among the younger members of the team.
    John was a wonder athlete.
    He was taller than virtually anyone else on the squad,
    except for some basketball players--
    6 feet 4.
    Quiet, reserved, and a magnificent runner.
    He had the longest running stride in the world
    at that time.
    And he ran a marvelous race to win the gold medal
    at 800 meters.
    He was far better than the rest of the field,
    as you probably know and have seen.
    He virtually came to a halt at the halfway mark of the race
    at the end of the first quarter, let the rest of the field
    go by because he was pocketed in.
    He couldn't get to the outside.
    He couldn't make a move, because there
    were runners in front of him and alongside of him,
    so he let the field go by him, ran around the entire field,
    and then came on to win handily down the stretch
    and down the backstretch first, around the far turn,
    and down the stretch.
    And quiet, self-effacing, and just a wonderful athlete.
    Now, tell me about your anticipation for your event.
    I know you were training for it.
    And what happened?
    The 400-meter relay was selected beforehand.
    And the four of us, in order--
    Sam Stoller would start.
    He had the best start of the group of us.
    I was to run the second leg down the back stretch,
    straight away.
    Foy Draper on the third leg and Frank Wykoff on the anchor leg.
    He was the great veteran.
    This was his third Olympic team that he was on.
    And we practiced passing the baton.
    And passing the baton is terribly
    important in a 400-meter relay, because the race is short
    and you want to make the best possible pass.
    We would practice this every day in that order,
    so that we knew each other and we
    knew the distance we had to start
    running and things like that.
    The morning of the day we were supposed to run in the trial
    heats, we were called into a meeting-- the seven
    sprinters were, along with Dean Cromwell, the assistant head
    track coach, and Lawson Robertson,
    the head track coach.
    And Robertson announced to the seven of us
    that he 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.
    Now, there's no question that Jesse and Ralph were faster
    at 100 meters than Sam and I. They'd
    beaten us fairly regularly.
    And we were shocked.
    Sam was completely stunned.
    He didn't say a word in the meeting.
    I'm a brash 18-year-old kid.
    And I said, coach, you can't hide world-class sprinters.
    In order to be a world-class sprinter,
    you must run in world-class competition.
    And we don't know of any Germans,
    outside of Erich Borchmeyer, who finished fifth
    in the 100-meter final, beaten by Frank Wycoff, as well as
    Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe.
    He was the best German sprinter.
    Later, I beat Borchmeyer in another post-Olympic track
    meet.
    But we all knew we could beat Borchmeyer.
    And you don't hide world-class sprinters.
    I said, coach, there can't be any German world-class
    sprinters.
    He said, well, we're going to take no chances,
    said Dean Cromwell.
    And Jesse and Ralph are going to take
    Sam's place and your place.
    At which point, Jesse spoke up and said, coach,
    I've won my three gold medals--
    the 100, the 200, and the long jump.
    I'm tired, I've had it.
    Let Marty and Sam run, they deserve it, said Jesse.
    And Cromwell pointed his finger at him and said,
    you'll do as you're told.
    And in those days, Black athletes did as they were told.
    And Jesse was quiet after that.
    But he volunteered not to run--
    not to win his fourth gold medal, so that Sam and I--
    the only two Jews on the track team--
    could run and win or try to win.
    The only way we could have lost that race is had we
    dropped the baton.
    Frank Wykoff later said that we probably
    would have run just as fast because our baton-passing would
    have been superior because we had practiced.
    I spoke up.
    I said something else--
    I said, coach, no matter who runs,
    we're going to win this race by 15 yards.
    We won by 15 yards.
    When you see the finish of the race, all you see
    is Frank Wykoff crossing the finish line.
    You don't even see the next second-place finisher.
    He's out of the picture, he's that far back--
    15 yards behind.
    The Germans didn't finish second or third--
    they finished fourth.
    They were placed third, because the Dutch team ran out
    of their lane and so they were disqualified.
    But they finished third in the race, some 15 or 16 yards back.
    So the story given us was an out-and-out lie by Robertson
    and by Dean Cromwell.
    I believe now that with Hitler's humiliation
    by having the Black athletes stand on the winning podium
    the many times that they did, in the 100, the 200, the 400,
    the 800, the long jump, the high jump--
    they were dominating the Games--
    that it would have been further humiliation
    for Hitler to have Jews stand on the winning podium.
    And as I said, the only way we would not
    stand on the winning podium, had we dropped the baton.
    We would have won the race by 15 yards or more.
    So we didn't get to run.
    Now, you say now this is the way you look at it.
    Try to put yourself back to this time in the summer of 1936.
    As you were told that you weren't going to be running,
    what was going through your mind?
    What were you thinking?
    As I was told that Sam and I would not run,
    I thought that track politics was taking place.
    That Dean Cromwell, the assistant head track coach,
    wanted to make sure that both his boys--
    Foy Draper and Frank Wykoff--
    were on the team.
    And so he was making sure they were going to be on, because
    in a trial race in the Olympic Village
    three days before the 400-meter race took place,
    we ran a trial heat and Stoller won the race, beating me by
    about, oh, a shoulder, a foot.
    And we both beat Foy Draper by a yard.
    So here is Draper running the relay, whom we had both
    beaten just a couple of days before,
    and Sam and I were not running.
    In the entire history of the modern Olympic Games,
    now going into its 100th year, no fit American track and field
    performer has ever not competed in the Olympic Games,
    except for Sam Stoller and me, the only two Jews
    on the 1936 team.
    Every other American track and field athlete
    has competed, so long as he was physically fit--
    didn't have a pulled muscle or didn't have an appendectomy,
    as one of our track athletes did have
    and couldn't run-- a fellow named Harold Smallwood.
    But with that exception, every athlete has run.
    OK, but you weren't thinking in those terms in August of '36.
    You were thinking it was basically favoritism again?
    In August of '36, I thought originally--
    I did mention in that meeting, I did say, coach, we're
    the only two Jews on the track team, Sam and I.
    There's bound to be a furor about this back home.
    We'll worry about that later, said Dean Cromwell.
    Later, of course, Dean Cromwell also
    was a member of the America First committee,
    that group in America, which was sympathetic to the Nazi cause.
    So my thoughts were that Cromwell
    was seeing to it that his boys were on that 400-meter relay.
    And about that threat of other German sprinters,
    that was just out of whole cloth--
    it was a complete lie.
    What were you feeling?
    Here, you've been preparing for this in a way for years.
    And you've been training especially hard.
    You were, I'm sure, very excited to participate in the Olympics.
    I was fortunate.
    I was young-- I was 18.
    Sam was three years older than I. He was a senior at Michigan.
    And in those days, when you finished your college career,
    that was usually it.
    And Sam was at the end of his college career.
    He vowed never to run again, because
    of this terrible disappointment.
    He did run and won a collegiate championship
    the following year.
    He did change his mind a bit later on.
    I, as an 18-year-old, just out of my freshman year,
    I vowed that come 1940, I'd win it all.
    I'd win the 100, the 200--
    I'd run on the relay.
    I was going to be 22 in 1940.
    And I'd be at the height of my supposed athletic abilities
    in those years.
    Of course, 1940 never came.
    There was a war on.
    1944 never came.
    But I was frustrated and angered enough so
    that I could look ahead and get even, four years hence.
    Young enough to get even.
    In addition, I was a football player at Syracuse.
    And a month from the Olympic Games,
    I was going to be playing football
    at Syracuse University-- my first varsity season, then.
    And I had something to look forward to.
    I had something to dissipate my disappointment,
    by having a football season looming for me.
    So you weren't even temporarily devastated by this?
    If you use the word devastated--
    I was not devastated.
    I was angered.
    I was frustrated.
    And as I say, I was young enough to think ahead.
    Say that again without the "as I say," please.
    I was not devastated by not being on the 400-meter team.
    Terribly angry, terribly frustrated,
    but I was young enough to be able to look ahead to 1940
    and perhaps win it all--
    to win the 100 and the 200.
    I might be at my athletic peak when I was 22 years of age.
    Here I was, only 18.
    So I had something to shoot for, something to look forward
    to come 1940 and the next Olympic Games.
    I also had a football season I was looking forward to,
    because I was going into my sophomore year, first year
    of varsity football, and that occupied my thoughts and time
    and energies immediately after the Games.
    You mentioned that Owens stepped forward and said,
    let these guys run.
    Did you get that kind of support from the other athletes?
    No one else said anything in that room
    during the course of this meeting.
    Ralph Metcalfe didn't say a word.
    I think he wanted to run on the relay and this justification--
    why not, if he could run on the relay?
    And the only other athlete involved who didn't run
    was Mack Robinson.
    Mack, Jackie Robinson's, older brother already
    had won the silver medal at 200 meters.
    And he was not as good at 100 meters as he was at 200 meters.
    In addition, he was not involved in the practice
    of passing the baton.
    That 400-meter relay was set, as I say,
    leading off with Sam Stoller with that great start.
    I was running the second leg, Foy Draper with the third leg,
    Frank Wykoff the anchor leg.
    And we practiced passing the baton
    in that order for two weeks in the Olympic Village.
    Did the other athletes-- after this decision had been made,
    were they supportive?
    Or did you guys just not talk about it?
    They were supportive.
    The other athletes were supportive afterwards,
    patting me on the back-- saying, oh, you should have run.
    Not en masse-- everybody was involved
    with his own achievements or striving.
    The feeling was tough luck.
    But for me, as I say, it was the feeling of I'll show them,
    I'll get even.
    I was there.
    I sat in the stands and watched the race.
    The qualifying heats proved that we
    were by far the best team among the other countries
    of the world-- the best 400-meter relay team.
    The following day, I was walking across the campus
    of the Olympic Village and I heard my name called to me.
    And 50 yards away was Lawson Robertson, the head track
    coach, with his cane.
    He was an older man.
    Marty-- and I jogged over to him.
    I just want to tell you how sorry I am.
    I made a terrible mistake.
    And he said he was sorry.
    Dean Cromwell didn't say a word.
    Never spoke to me again.
    I don't know what he said or thought to anyone else,
    but he never said a word to me.
    Wykoff later said we would have run just as fast had
    you and Sam run, because our superior baton-passing because
    of practice would have enabled us to run and win.
    Now, you started to say you were there watching your meet.
    What was that like?
    Watching the trial heat and watching
    the final the following day were strange, weird--
    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.
    As they warmed up, jogging up and down the track.
    That should be me out there.
    And frustrated at it.
    And also feeling relief I wasn't running in this race.
    I didn't have the pressure of receiving the baton,
    running with it, and passing the baton.
    I wasn't fearful of dropping the baton.
    And all relay runners have that uncertainty,
    that fear of the possibility.
    I've never dropped a baton in the many relay races I've run,
    but I've seen it dropped.
    So there was some feeling of relief.
    But mostly it was anger and frustration and the feeling
    that should be me out there.
    Who were you sitting with during the event?
    My recollection is I sat with Herman Goldberg
    during the event, for either the trial race, the trial heats,
    or for the finals.
    I don't believe I sat with Herman both those days.
    Very often, we would sit together
    and sometimes we would not.
    After all, he had his own assignments to take care of.
    He was practicing and playing with the American baseball
    team.
    But I do believe that for one of those races, either the trial
    heat or in the final, that Herman was alongside of me.
    Did you talk about what was going on?
    No, I didn't say a word.
    Words can't convey how you feel-- and not at that moment,
    anyhow.
    Words wouldn't have made me feel any better or less angry.
    I just sat there and suffered.
    I felt all these emotions.
    And again, at the age of 18, the world
    is bright and glorious in front of you.
    I was a good athlete.
    I knew that.
    And four years hence, I was going to be out there again.
    Now, when the American team did win and went up to the podium
    to receive their honors, were you proud for them?
    Were you happy for them?
    When the American team was on the podium,
    I was not necessarily proud for them.
    I was pleased, of course, that they won.
    And I was particularly pleased that they
    won by 15 yards, to prove the point that anyone
    of the American sprinters could have won on the relay
    and won the event handily.
    But I don't feel as though I was an American athlete
    or that I was a Jewish athlete.
    I was an athlete.
    I was a member of the Olympic team.
    I was in the Olympic stadium.
    I was part of this overall thing which
    I believe has done me so much good in all the years
    which followed--
    60 years now, which have followed those '36 games--
    where I began to realize that I'm just
    like the other athletes of the world,
    the other people of the world, and they're just like me.
    We're all alike.
    We're all brothers.
    And the whole point of the Games--
    the whole point of all athletic competition--
    is to learn to respect each other, to like each other,
    to love each other.
    To get to really know each other.
    And I was part of that.
    And I was also angry.
    Were you envious?
    I don't think I was envious.
    The only feeling I have today--
    I'm the grandfather of 10 and I'm
    the great-grandfather of four.
    So I don't have the grandchildren
    of the great-grandchildren I can show this gold medal to.
    That's the only feeling of disappointment I now have--
    that I can't show my grandchildren
    this gold Olympic medal.
    That's the only feeling I have now.
    I think it's wonderful that I was on the team.
    I think it's great that I made this trip.
    It exposed me to marvelous things.
    And also exposed me to the hurt of anti-Semitism.
    Is there anything else you can tell me
    about what it was like, not necessarily
    for your competition in particular,
    but just what it was like being in the Olympic stadium?
    Can you describe it?
    The Olympic stadium itself is a very impressive place.
    It was particularly impressive then,
    filled with 120,000 people.
    And it was virtually brand-new.
    And I'll never forget walking into the stadium,
    marching in along with my American teammates
    in the Opening Day Parade.
    And I use the word march loosely here,
    because American athletes don't march very well.
    We slumped in, in line, but walking
    in the manner of a loose-limbed, easygoing American athletes.
    And I remember looking up at Adolf Hitler as we marched by.
    And he was glaring down at us, we thought.
    And the comment heard in the ranks--
    and I said it also--
    he looks just like Charlie Chaplin.
    And that's just the way we felt about him.
    He was almost a comic figure, with his drab khaki uniform
    he wore.
    Khaki shirt and khaki pants, no decorations on it.
    That funny little mustache and a cowlick over his forehead.
    And he was a comic figure.
    I thought of him and I think many of us
    thought of him as like a typical South American
    dictator of those years, who is here today and gone tomorrow.
    After all, he'd just been in power some
    two and a half years.
    And who knew how long he was going to last
    or how much power he ultimately would have.
    But he was comic to us, along with the rest of his entourage.
    And certainly they were funny-looking,
    in terms of Goring and his uniform and Goebbels
    with his rat-like face and some of the diplomats in there
    with their long frock coats and ascots
    and some of the army uniforms and naval uniforms around them.
    It was an experience I'm pleased to have been part of.
    And I'm still angry at not having
    that medal to show the kids.
    Was there something awesome about marching in with 100,000
    people sitting there?
    We felt no feeling of awe.
    We were cocky, young, well-trained, good athletes.
    And nothing awesome about going into a huge stadium.
    We'd been in huge stadiums before.
    We'd competed in these huge stadiums.
    One of the things I remember most
    was, as part of the opening ceremonies,
    these thousands of pigeons, which had been kept in cages--
    I'm going to need to stop you here,
    because the tape's going to-- but I
    do want to hear that story.
    What is that noise?
    That's just the wind.
    When we stopped, you were describing
    what it was like being in the Olympic stadium--
    the pageantry of--
    The Opening Day Parade.
    Yeah.
    One of the things I best remember about the opening day
    ceremonies of the Olympic games--
    I was standing in the infield of the stadium
    while the Olympic oath was being taken,
    and the various music was being played--
    was the release of these thousands of pigeons,
    which had been cooped up.
    And they were alongside the inner perimeter of the stadium.
    And now after being in these cages for--
    I don't know how many hours or how many days,
    they were suddenly released.
    And they flew up over the stadium
    and circled round and round.
    And we began to hear on our straw hats--
    that was part of our uniform, the straw hats--
    splat, splat, splat from these pigeons.
    And we were afraid to look up, of course,
    or else, we'd get it in the eye.
    But there we were cringing in the stadium.
    And the splat-- splat of all these thousands of pigeons
    going round and round, and finally, they
    went far enough up to get out of the stadium and flew away.
    It was a very funny moment.
    Do you remember-- were you at the closing ceremonies?
    No, we left before the end of the Olympic games.
    Avery Brundage, I believe, the head of the American Olympic
    Committee, was the basic reason, I believe,
    that Sam and I didn't get to run the Olympic games.
    Adolf Hitler was being humiliated by the great success
    of the Black American athletes.
    And I think that he wanted to see to it that Jewish athletes
    didn't stand on the winning podium
    and further humiliate Adolf Hitler-- embarrass him
    with that nonsense about arrogance of primacy
    because here were the great Black athletes, who couldn't be
    kept off the winning podium because
    of their number and their great reputations.
    And they were marvelous.
    But he went too rather obscure Jewish American athletes
    who could be kept from the winning podium.
    And, I believe, that Avery Brundage,
    who was close to Hitler, who had examined Germany
    for anti-Semitism the year before to see whether or not
    the games should be held in Germany.
    He was Avery Brundage keeping Jews from the winning podium,
    so as not to further embarrass Adolf Hitler.
    It was something that you realized later.
    I was more aware of it later than I am--
    I was more aware of it later than I was at that time.
    But Brundage was a most important figure-- head
    of the American Olympic Committee and, later on,
    the president of the International Olympic
    Committee.
    You mentioned you wanted-- you had wanted--
    or you were thinking forward to the 1940 Olympics.
    So apparently, this experience didn't sour you at all
    on sports, fierceness, Olympics.
    My experience in the Olympic games
    and the fact that I didn't run didn't sour me
    on the games at all.
    It soured me on Avery Brundage, certainly
    soured me on anti-Semitism and the Nazis as well.
    But as far as the Olympic games then and for many years
    thereafter, I was an Olympic booster.
    I didn't want us to boycott the games and the Soviet Union
    in 1980.
    I didn't want the Soviet Union to boycott
    the American games in 1984.
    But I'm not very happy with the current Olympic games--
    the Olympic games of '96 and the enormous commercialization
    of the Olympic games.
    I think that the Olympic ideal, the Olympic Creed,
    doesn't exist any longer.
    It's all strictly professionalism.
    I think that the current Olympic games in Atlanta
    is a huge project for profits, and that's about all.
    At what point after the games did you
    become more aware of what was actually taking place
    in Germany and in Europe?
    I became aware of what took place in Germany in 1938.
    Kristallnacht was the beginning of the knowledge generally
    of what took place in Germany in 1936.
    Even the German Jews stayed in Germany until 1938.
    Many left but far more remained in Germany until '38.
    And then they started to try to get out of Germany.
    Of course, I didn't know about the Holocaust
    until after the war was over.
    I was a Marine in the Central Pacific
    during World War II in the Marshall Islands.
    And the European campaign was that far
    distant from our involvement in the Pacific.
    So it wasn't until I came back in December of '45 that I began
    to realize--
    I began to hear and know of what took place in the closing
    years of World War II.
    Did you rethink at all about your participation in 1936?
    I mean, when you started learning much more,
    did it make you think about it all in context?
    I've been asked many times whether I have second guesses
    about going to Germany in 1936.
    And I persist in saying that I'm delighted I went.
    I'm glad that the games took place in '36.
    I saw no harm from the games themselves.
    I saw a great deal of good from the games for me
    as an individual, learning about the other athletes of the world
    and for the great success of the non-Aryan athletes,
    the marvelous Black athletes, who
    had this great success in helping smash
    that myth of Aryan supremacy.
    I think that was a very positive thing.
    Did you afterwards think more about being a Jewish athlete?
    I mean, did it--
    because, in fact, that seems to be what happened in 1936, even
    though prior to that, you never considered
    yourself a Jewish athlete.
    You were one.
    Something took place in 1937, which
    was a direct result of what happened to me in 1936.
    I was playing football at Syracuse.
    And for this particular week, I was the star of the team.
    We had upset Cornell the week before.
    And I had scored both touchdowns for Syracuse
    against Cornell, 14 to 6 was the final score.
    And I had the best day I ever had on the football field--
    a lot of publicity about me then.
    And I'm embarrassed almost to say I was the star of the team,
    going to a game against Maryland,
    in Maryland, in Baltimore.
    And as we're getting dressed for the game,
    sitting alongside of me is the other starting halfback.
    His name is Wilmeth Sidath-Singh.
    He is a Black man, but his mother
    had married a Hindu physician.
    And Will and I played side by side.
    We're in the same class.
    We took classes together.
    He helped me through my physics class, my physics course.
    Later, he was a member of the Black airmen,
    the Black squadron, who helped form
    the one squadron of Black aviators in World War II.
    But this was in 1937 in Baltimore, Maryland moving--
    getting dressed for the game.
    He's sitting right alongside of me right here.
    He slept alongside of me where we slept in the gym
    during the football season.
    And the coach came in as he saw him along
    with the Director of Athletics, Lou Andreas.
    And he said, fellows, I've got some news.
    The local press in Maryland just found out
    that WIll is not a Hindu.
    But he's a Black man.
    And, consequently, he won't play today.
    And I said to myself sitting there, stand up,
    Morty and say, if Will doesn't play, I don't play.
    And I'm one of the leaders of the team.
    I'm the star of the team this week
    anyhow because of that previous game the week before.
    And I say, stand up and say that.
    And I think to myself, but if I do stand up and say that,
    and the game is canceled, and there's a ruckus--
    just furor develops as a result of the game being canceled,
    if that happens, they'll point to me,
    and there's that Jewish guy getting in trouble again.
    Because just the year before, I'd
    been involved in the anti-Semitic
    incident in Berlin.
    And so I didn't say a word.
    And Will didn't play.
    And I played.
    And we got beat.
    We got beat 12-0.
    A couple of years after that, Will
    was killed in World War II.
    And to this day, I still feel very strongly about it,
    that I should have gotten up and said.
    And he was good enough to die for our country,
    but he wasn't good enough to play against Maryland.
    I'm going to ask you one more question.
    Sure.
    And also would you try to pull your jacket down a little bit?
    I'm slumping down.
    Why don't you tell me your question?
    Hmm?
    Yeah.
    And your time.
    [CREW TALKING IN BACKGROUND]
    After the Olympic games, many of the track and field athletes
    toured Europe and several different track meets.
    I ran on a 400-yard relay team in London
    at White City stadium.
    I ran with Jesse Owens, and Ralph Metcalf,
    and Frank Weiskopf, and me.
    We set a world's record at 400 yards.
    That world's record still stands mostly because they rarely
    run that race.
    And they don't run yards anymore.
    They now run meters.
    So the four of us are still world record holders
    at the 400-yard relay.
    I also ran in Paris after the Olympic games--
    ran against Frank Wykoff.
    And I won the race against Wykoff that day.
    And a combination of Japanese and French athletes,
    as well as American athletes, competed that day.
    And I won that race.
    Also I ran in Scotland.
    I ran in a handicap race and didn't win that handicap race.
    I would set back so far from the rest of the field
    because these were local athletes in Edinburgh,
    Scotland, that I was literally off the track, that far back.
    And I had to run up a slight incline to get to the track
    and then start running.
    I finished out of the money.
    But what I think what you're telling me
    from those first few races is that you probably
    were good enough to run in the Olympics.
    Yeah, well, I was on the team.
    But to have actually competed instead of all that stuff--
    Well, you want me to say that?
    Sure.
    Well--
    All of a sudden a few weeks after the Olympics,
    you're making a world record in the same event
    I don't want to brag.
    I mean, it's been said I was on the team.
    And that's the important thing.
    I made the team.
    And, obviously, I was good enough
    to run in the Olympic games because I
    was on the American team.
    And American athletes compete in the Olympic games
    when they make the Olympic team, except for these two
    Jewish athletes who didn't because
    of Avery Brundage, and Adolf Hitler, and anti-Semitism.
    And I'd like to add one other thing that sometimes people
    feel sorry for me and what happened to me in Germany
    in Berlin in 1936.
    What happened to me was as nothing, absolutely zero,
    compared to that which took place later on.
    There was just no feeling of comparison
    and no feeling of hurt.
    Still feeling of anger, but I was there.
    And that mattered.
    What took place was much, much more important afterwards.
    I think I have one more question.
    Certainly.
    You mentioned this race in Maryland and--
    The football game in Maryland.
    Right, I'm sorry, the football game and the fact
    that you are very conflicted about standing up
    for this Black Indian athlete--
    Yes.
    Have you thought about ways in which your experience
    from the 1936 Olympics impacted you or shaped
    you in terms of values or choices
    you made afterwards It's a fairly broad question, but--
    I think my experience in 1936, my experience in athletics,
    generally, specifically in '36, made
    me aware of the fact that I am not
    different than other people of the world.
    I'm not different than Blacks or Browns or yellows or whites,
    that we're all one.
    And I think I've learned not to be tolerant necessarily.
    Because tolerance, I think, implies
    sort of a superiority over individuals.
    But I've learned to appreciate of the people, I think,
    because of my experience in '36 and my experience in athletics.
    Did it make you more vigilant toward racism, anti-Semitism,
    discrimination?
    I think the experience of all athletes
    makes me more conscious of other people, of bias
    and prejudice against Blacks, and Asiatics, and Latins,
    and Jews.
    I think that we're people.
    I've learned that through sports.
    I think that at every level of sports from my days
    as a schoolboy to my days as a broadcaster has enabled
    me to thoroughly enjoy and appreciate
    the abilities of the great athletes
    I was able to look at and broadcast
    about the Jim Browns, the wonderful Black athletes,
    the wonderful Japanese athletes, the great athletes of the world
    regardless of what their background was.
    Sports is the great equalizer.
    Sports is the great equalizer.
    The fellow gets to the finish line
    first is the winner, which brings
    to mind another thought that the Olympic games should
    be a competition amongst individuals and not
    amongst teams.
    Because teams represent nationalities.
    Individuals represent themselves.
    Even though we wore the uniform of the United States Olympic
    team, we ran as individuals.
    For the relay, the relay is a unique track-and-field event--
    four men running together but running individually together.
    Basketball and hockey-- great sports, a wonderful sports,
    and football, too, of course.
    But the point of sports is the exultation
    of the individual athlete feels when he does it by himself.
    And that's the point of the Olympic games.
    Team sports are marvelous.
    They teach all the things that ought
    to be taught in terms of teamwork, and cooperation,
    and practice, and respect for the other team, and all that.
    But the Olympic games are for the individual
    and for the extolling of the individual abilities--
    the excellence of the individual rather than
    the nation or the team.
    Thank you.
    Thank--
    Anything else you want to add?
    I want say a little Margaret.
    OK.

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    Marty Glickman (né Martin Irvin Glickman), born in 1917 in Bronx, NY, discusses his childhood and growing up in Brooklyn, NY; his Romanian parents; his participation in sports throughout his childhood and youth; his competition with Ben Johnson and realizing his potential to compete in the Olympics; his memories of antisemitism in Europe and the United States; his races against Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe during the Olympic qualification events at Randall Island, NY; the voyage to Germany with the 1936 U.S. Olympic Team; his memories of a possible United States boycott of the 1936 Olympic Games; his friendship with Herman Goldberg, a member of the 1936 U.S. Baseball Team; his views on the role of politics in the Olympic Games; the arrival and reception of the U.S. Team in Berlin, Germany; Hitler's reaction to the victorious black athletes; his memories of the Olympic village in Berlin and the opening ceremonies; the controversy that arose when he and Sam Stohler were removed from the 400 meter relay and replaced with Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalf; the role of Dean Cromwell, the American track coach, in excluding Glickman and Stohler from the relay; his memories of watching Owens and Metcalfe win the relay; his views on the involvement of Avery Brundage, President of the American Olympic Committee, in having him and Stohler removed from the relay; his experience with racism in 1937, when a fellow Syracuse football teammate was excluded from a game because he was black; and his hopes to compete in other Olympics after 1936.
    Interviewee
    Marty Glickman
    Interviewer
    Randy M. Goldman
    Date
    interview:  1996 May 20

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Genre/Form
    Oral histories.
    Extent
    4 videocasettes (Betacam SP) : sound, color ; 1/2 in..

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    Keywords & Subjects

    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Exhibitions Department produced the interview with Marty Glickman in preparation for the exhibit, "The Nazi Olympics, Berlin 1936."
    Funding Note
    The cataloging of this oral history interview has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.
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    Also in The Nazi Olympics: Berlin 1936 oral history collection

    Contains interviews conducted in May 1996 by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's Exhibitions Department in preparation for "The Nazi Olympics: Berlin 1936" exhibition. The interviewees include: Milton Green, John Woodruff, Herman Goldberg, Marty Glickman, and Margaret Lambert. The interviews document the lives of five athletes and their experiences during the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany

    Date: 1996

    Oral history interview with Milton Green

    Oral history interview with Milton Green

    Oral History

    Milton Green, born circa 1914 in Lowell, MA, discusses his childhood in Brookline, MA; his three siblings; attending Reform Temple with his family; his early interest in track and field sports; his participation in track sports while studying at Harvard University; receiving a certificate from Avery Brundage, of the American Olympic Committee, informing him of his qualification for final Olympic Team tryouts at Randall Island, NY; deciding with his teammate Norman Carnis to boycott the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany at the urging of Rabbi Levi and other members of the Temple Israel; meeting with Harvard track coach Yacko Macola, who attempted to persuade him not to boycott the Olympics; following the 1936 Olympic events by radio and newspaper; his thoughts on the lack of an overall United States boycott of the 1936 Olympic Games; enlisting in the United States Navy in 1943; being in Scouting Squadron 31 as an air combat intelligence officer; and leaving the service in 1946.

    Oral history interview with John Woodruff

    Oral history interview with John Woodruff

    Oral History

    John Woodruff, born July 5, 1915, discusses his childhood in Connellsville, PA; his introduction to track and field sports in high school; his memories of racism in Connellsville and at the University of Pittsburgh; his impressions of Adolf Hitler and Germany's treatment of the Jews at the time of the 1936 Olympic Games; his memories of the 1936 U. S. Olympic team's voyage to Berlin; training before the games; the athletes’ lifestyle in the Olympic village and relationships with fellow athletes; his recollections of Marty Glickman and Sam Stohler and the controversy over their exclusion from the 1936 Games; his memories of winning the 800 meter race and receiving the gold medal; his return to the United States and the University of Pittsburgh; his memories of Jesse Owens during and after the 1936 Games; his experiences of racism after returning to the United States; his impressions of Hitler's actions after 1936 and the use of the Olympic Games as propaganda; his relationship with Marty Glickman; and his recollections of the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1936 Olympic Games.

    Oral history interview with Herman Goldberg

    Oral history interview with Herman Goldberg

    Oral History

    Herman Goldberg, born in November 1915, discusses his childhood and family in Brooklyn, NY; the importance of sports in his life; playing baseball at Brooklyn College and in the Canadian American League, where he was catcher for the Rome Colonels; his selection for the 1936 United States Olympic Baseball Team at pre-Olympic try outs in Baltimore, MD; his participation in exhibition baseball at the 1936 Olympics; his participation in baseball demonstrations throughout Germany immediately after the Olympics; discovering that the Olympic village would be used for the German Army after the close of the games; his memories of the voyage with the United States team to Germany; his memories of the proposed United States boycott of the 1936 Olympic Games; and his impressions of Adolf Hitler's behavior during the various events of the Olympics, especially when black or Jewish athletes won medals.

    Oral history interview with Margaret Lambert

    Oral history interview with Margaret Lambert

    Oral History

    Margaret Lambert (née Gretl Bergman), born April 12, 1914, discusses her childhood in Laupheim, Germany; her involvement in various sports as a child; her memories of antisemitism after the Nazis took power in 1933; her relationships with non-Jewish friends and athletes; moving to England in October 1933 to attend school and to train; her victory at the British National Championships in June 1934; returning to Germany to become a member of the 1936 German Olympic team; her relationships with other athletes and coaches on the German team while training for the Olympics; her reflections on how she depended on her anger toward the Nazis to help her succeed in the running and jumping events; her time in school and training in Stuttgart, Germany; her outstanding performance in qualifying events in Stuttgart just prior to the Olympics; her dismissal from the German Olympic team following the qualifying events in Stuttgart; immigrating to the United States in May 1937; her father's brief imprisonment in the Dachau concentration camp in 1938; her family's escape from Germany to England in 1939; her impressions of the Olympic Games as Nazi propaganda; and her decision to attend the Olympic Games in Atlanta in 1996 as a special guest of the German government.

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