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86 August 25 • 2016 Obituaries obituaries » Obituaries from page 85 2102480 Matt Lebovic | Times of Israel A gnes Grunwald-Spier's recent book Who Betrayed the Jews? includes information on 30 Jewish Olympians killed in the Holocaust. • One of these heroes was renowned skier Bronislaw Czech, who represented Poland in three Olympic Games. When the Nazis began implementing the Final Solution, Czech's fame worked against him. At age 32, he was sent to Auschwitz. There, he was offered free- dom in exchange for training German youth in skiing, but he refused. Czech died in Auschwitz, and dozens of streets and schools are named for him in Poland today. • Another world champion was the Tunisian-born Victor "Young" Perez, a French Jewish boxing star. In 1931, he became the youngest flyweight world champion in boxing history. None of this mattered when Perez was denounced in 1943 and sent to Auschwitz. "At first the SS let him train so that he could fight in a show fight for their enter- tainment against a member of the SS," wrote Grunwald-Spier. "After that, he was treated like all the other prisoners and he was forced to participate in boxing matches for the amusement of the Nazis. By 1945 Victor had survived 140 bouts in 15 months and won 139," she wrote. The young champion's life ended at age 33 on the death march from Auschwitz. • A Jewish Olympic fencer targeted for his athleticism was Attila Petschauer, who won team Olympic medals in 1928 in Amsterdam and in 1932 in Los Angeles for Hungary. While imprisoned in the labor camp Davidovka in Ukarine, he was singled out by guards who had been informed of Petschauer's fame. "[A witness] saw the guards tell Attila to take off his clothes and climb a tree and crow like a rooster," wrote Grunwald- Spier. "As he crowed they sprayed him with cold water which froze and eventu- ally he fell off the tree. They took him back to the barracks but he died a few hours later." • Among interwar Europe's most patriotic and versatile Jewish athletes was Lilly Henoch, who rose to prominence in Germany with the Berlin Sports Club, which was one-quarter Jewish in the 1920s. Her specialties included hockey, handball and long-jumping, and she was the go-to cap- tain for several team sports. Had Germany been allowed to participate in the 1924 Olympics, Henoch might have earned sev- eral medals, having set world records in discus, shot-put and the 100-meter relay. Henoch's athletic versatility and ability to earn Germany medals meant nothing in 1933, when she was dismissed from the Berlin Sports Club. In September 1942, Henoch and family members were deported from Germany to Riga, where they were murdered by an Einsatzgruppen mobile killing unit later that year. • Of the Olympians killed in the Shoah, quite a few were from the Netherlands. In that country, Jewish women helped take home numerous medals for gymnastics, including at the 1928 Olympics held in Amsterdam. One top Dutch Jewish gymnast was Judikje "Jud" Simons, who helped the team earn a gold medal in 1928. After the team's win, Simons and her husband ran an orphanage in Utrecht, where they lived with their own two children. During the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, the family was given a chance to escape deportation to the death camps, but Simons and her husband refused to leave the orphans. On March 3, 1943, the entire family and dozens of children from the orphanage were gassed at Sobibor. In her book, Grunwald-Spier docu- mented the shared fate of several Dutch Jewish women from the 1928 Olympic women's gymnastics team, deported with their husbands and young children to Sobibor, where more than 200,000 Jews were killed. Also murdered at Sobibor was the team's Jewish coach, Gerrit Kleerekoper, along with his wife and daughter. • Numbered among those killed by the Nazis are also several Jewish Olympian soccer players — hailing from countries such as Germany, Poland and Romania. * The Jewish Olympians Killed By Hitler Bronislaw Czech