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2010-08-13

Jewish sport in Warsaw

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Moses Schorr Foundation has the pleasure of inviting you to an exhibition of “Jewish sport in pre-war Warsaw “. The exhibition will open on 18th of August at 17.30 near the entrance to Park Agricola in Warsaw.

In traditional Jewish culture, spirituality was more important than physicality. There was no question of balance between spirit and body. Students of cheders and yeshivas did not have physical education lessons. At the end of nineteenth century, when the development of Zionism and the sports movement began, some political circles initiated the idea of educating the "new Jew", who would be prepared for the challenges of colonization of Palestine, for physical labor etc. After the pogroms, which occurred in Russia in the early twentieth century, Jews started to form self-defense groups. Subsequently, the workers’ clubs emerged. One of the most popular clubs was ‘Samson’, in which sportsmen trained in weightlifting and wrestling.

The first sport clubs of Polish Jews were created in Galicia. They appeared in Warsaw during the German occupation in 1915-1918. The pre-war Warsaw clubs (both Christian and Jewish) were heavily politicized institutions performing social, educational and cultural functions. Many clubs were linked to political parties. Makkabi was controlled by the Zionists while Bund took care of Morgenstern. A set of disciplines, which were practiced in the club, depended on the ideology professed by the party. In the interwar period, Jewish athletes set more than 30 individual records in Poland, won 84 individual titles and 24 national masters team titles, and appeared 126 times in the national team in various disciplines.

During the Second World War, Jewish athletes often initiated resistance in the ghettos and contacts with the Polish underground army. Although they died tragically, they are still remembered thanks to the exhibition established by the Schorr Foundation. The surviving documents, survivor testimonies, press materials, diaries and photographs present the forgotten tradition of Jewish sport in Warsaw, as well as profiles of Jewish athletes and their achievements in national teams.

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