Swimming Against Stereotype: The Story Of A Twentieth Century Jewish Athlete
 | Average Customer Rating: Recommend An essay about a twentieth century Central European Jew who challenged prevailing anti-Semitic stereotypes and, in the years just after the First World War, became a competitive rower and swimmer in what was then Czechoslovakia. In addition to profiling water polo player Kurt Epstein from his childhood to his decision to participate in the 1936 Berlin ”Nazi“ Olympics, the author addresses the problematic subject of Jews in sports. Product details and pricing info |
|---|
3 Customer Reviews Posted
- Determination To Fight Prejudicial Views on the Jewish Athletes
- Helen Epstein's work has always been a favorite of mine: informed, well written and in a style that teaches as she tells her personal stories.
Her father's story occurs at a time in Germany where there was an increased threat to Jews. It was a time when caricatures of Jewish merchants, store owners and athletes were used to build the foundation of making Jews as "different from us" and "less than us." It was this step that began to mark Jews as "non-people"and "not one of us," the German population. In so doing, when the Final Solution became evident, Germans no longer viewed Jews as regular people with whom to identify and care about and defend. Epstein's father's efforts attempted to counter such stereotypes and false separation amongst human beings. By using his athletic prowess he attempted to portray Jews as people like you, the everyday German person, persons who could become athletes, good athletes, very good athletes and so good that they could even make the Olympic team. This was meant to communicate that Jews could be people just like the people of other groups, including Germans, people whose plight one could empathize with. Kurt Epstein's efforts, among other things, worked to break down the separation of "you" and "me."
Helen Epstein's loving portrayal shows how an individual can make a difference. Her father was a HERO in that he made an unpopular decision for a worthy cause that many did not understand at the time. - 2006-11-24, 0 of 0 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- fascinating reading on an under-explored topic
- How many books have you read about Jewish athletes? Probably none. That is why this piece by Helen Epstein comes as such a welcome addition to a scarcely existent literature. Epstein focuses on Jewish athletes in Central Europe during the first half of the 20th century, using her own father as the centerpiece. Many readers are already familiar with Kurt Epstein from having read Helen Epstein's groundbreaking work "Children of the Holocaust." In it she reports on her father's dedication to swimming and water polo that led him to compete in the infamous Berlin Olympics of 1936.
In this essay she delves more deeply into her father's athletic proclivities, using his story to frame an essay that gives the reader a quick education about Jewish athleticism in Europe at that time, including an exploration of the social context within which it developed and was expressed. She seamlessly integrates her father's personal story with the larger social, political, and philosophical issues surrounding Jewish athleticism, most prominently the firmly entrenched view that Jews are people of the book, not the pool.
Yet some Jews did not turn out as expected, and those like Kurt Epstein who went "swimming against stereotype" should, at the very least, make the rest of us stop and think. Helen Epstein gives special attention to her father's ideals of sportsmanship, which seemed to be closer to his heart than anything he learned in Hebrew school.
Both personal and scholarly, this is a fine piece for anyone interested in the phenomenon of Jewish athletes and the implications of their achievements to their fellow Jews and to the larger world. With its clear understated prose that never fails to include the apposite fact and revealing detail, it also serves as a literary monument to the indomitable spirit of Kurt Epstein. - 2006-10-24, 1 of 1 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- Strong of body, strong of mind...
- Kurt Epstein, the author's late and former Czechoslovak father, embodied the bold new spirit of mid-20th century Judaism. Its aim? To debunk that age-old saw against the myth of the feeble "Jewish body," weak of physical stature but strong of mind. Jews were always deemed of being unfit for sport, "designed for the coffeehouse" and "for business"...whatever that meant at the time.
Kurt Epstein was a former member of the Czechoslovak Olympic swimming team during what's known in these parts as the halcyon days of the "First Republic" period, lasting from 1918-1938. Epstein, the father, attended Berlin's 1936 "Nazi" Olympics under controversial circumstances, and upon his return was susequently caught up in the maelstrom of hatred that consumed this part of the continent during WWII.
As one of his former nation's most successful competitive athletes, it boggles the mind how a man -- as Helen Epstein describes him -- "so staunch a citizen, so secure in his Czechdom," could have been carted off by his insensitive co-citizens after having proven himself so mightily in the pool.
Epstein hints at that roiling undercurrent of anti-Semitism which hides under a thin veneer of seeming Czech apathy in this part of the world. She tells us, and we know from personal experience, how it's always ready to pounce out at the slightest of provocations, usually at the instigation of an outside and malfeasant source.
For these reasons and hundreds more, the so-called "Czech Republic" has never been able to rise above its dim-witted destiny, and probably might never will.
I suppose that's fine, because the permanently-miserable citizens of this rainy landlocked statelet -- Middle Europe's on-again off-again garbage dump -- aren't interested in success nor in achieving anything of worth.
Goals? Legacy? Forget it about!
It's beer (160 litres/annum per capita), creamy goulash, and a penchant for constantly complaining about the corrupt state of their bloated and former Communist elected leadership -- now perched atop the nation's capital in Prague's Castle --- are what these shower-hating Bohemians do best.
Don't believe me? Come on over and sample them for yourself.
But I *do* go on, don't I?
Kurt Epstein was a man of sharp principles. He believed that if Czechs would all band together, much as they had under the clarion call for unity when Tomas G. Masaryk entered the city in 1918 (the national hymn should be "where have our leaders gone?" not "where is my home?"), that they could overcome their petty regional differences and learn to aspire for something greater than their claustrophobic little apartments and their blessed pints of "pivko."
Until his dying day, Kurt Epstein was a man working stridently for Czech causes in America, dispatching money and food aid and engaging in other supportive anti-totalitarian gestures from his home in the United States. Until the very end, he was Czech through and through -- which trumps anything these heirs to his erstwhile nation's legacy can boast about. That's the truth, folks.
Besides, what's a real Czech today anyways? There's no longer any such thing! These gimpy overweight and cigarette-loving (charred?) souls are a cobbled-together collective of a hodge-podge of varying ethnicities. The "geschmack" -- or flavour as they say in Yiddish -- is no longer present in these dour Bohemians. People like Kurt Epstein -- people who added an essential spark to the former Czechoslovakia's society -- are no longer with us, muscled out by collaborationist opportunist goons who have nothing to show for their consistent shows of perfidy other than cheekfuls of rear-sores from being booted so incessantly from behind! That'll serve you for your betrayal! When will you learn, oh dense and passive-aggressive Central Europeans? When will you learn?
Bohemia -- the largest of the three provinces in today's so-falsely-named-it-hurts "Czech Republic" -- seems to dominate the political and cultural affairs of this green bantustan. As such, efforts to rekindle the memory of the mighty swimmer, Kurt Epstein, and his sporting colleagues have come to naught.
Swimming in a vat of beer and pork stew, the Czechs can't hear what's going on "out there."
As they eventually surface for air -- they are people, too, 'natch -- the faint whisper of the paragons of their state's former incarnation -- men like Ms. Epstein's dad and the venerable "TGM" -- cannot possibly be heard over the cacophonous din of Ramstein German industrial metal music, their sickly and cloying sympathy for the world's so-called downtrodden (woe to the woebegone Czech), their meagre salaries, their "irony," and and their modern-day habit of forging a new "Czech future."
They want a history divorced from its collaborationist past, severed off from their dislike of the foreigners in their midst, but we're here to remind them that much went on here before you settled into that bar stool, Honza, and never left it. Soon we'll have to surgically remove you from it if you don't get up and stretch those deep-veined thrombosis legs of yours.
Kurt Epstein allows us to remember a time which will no longer be.
Besides HG, where have all the good Czechs gone?
-- ADM in Prague, the, er..."Czech Republic" - 2006-07-14, 0 of 1 people found this review helpful, Rated:
