MY SAY: ALFRED NAKACHE AND THE 1936 OLYMPICS
FROM THE JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS
Last week, just before the Olympic opening ceremonies in Paris, I sat down with UCLA historian Sarah Abrevaya Stein to talk about Alfred Nakache, the French North African Olympian, on the Jewish Review of Books Podcast. Nakache swam for France at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, fought for the Free French Forces in World War II, was betrayed by a fascist rival swimmer, and deported to Auschwitz . . . then swam for France again in 1948. We talked not only about his remarkable career but the ways in which his life exemplified the experience of North African Jews in the Holocaust, the vagaries of Vichy policy, mid-century butterfly technique, and much more.
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