Features
New book chronicles what were arguably the most important – and controversial Olympic Games in history
Review by BERNIE BELLAN With the 33rd Summer Olympics set to take place in Paris from July 26 to August 11, I thought it an opportune time to tell readers about a book that was released earlier this year and which provides a sweeping view of what were arguably the most controversial Olympic Games ever held – the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany.
Written by two writers, Glenn Allen and Richard Kaufman, who have spent most of their careers writing and producing films, PLAYED: The Games of the 1936 Berlin Olympics combines fiction and non-fiction in a thrilling, yet somewhat confusing manner.
Although Jewish readers are likely to find themselves focused on the rampant antisemitism that pervaded the games – given the determination of Hitler to use the Olympic Games as a masterful propaganda tool, this book is sure to appeal both to fans of the Olympic Games and students of history.
There are many heroes mentioned throughout “PLAYED,” including such well known names as Jesse Owens, who embarrassed Hitler to no end by winning what was then a record four Gold medals in various track events. But there were many other heroes as well, especially Alan Gould, who was the Associated Press Sports Editor, and who wrote many columns calling for a boycott of the games; and William Dodd, the US Ambassador to Germany from 1932-1937, who was warning of the dangers posed by the Nazi threat long before it became all too apparent to politicians, including President Franklin Roosevelt – who adopts quite a sanguine attitude toward the Nazi threat in this book.
And then there are the villains, chief among whom was the despicable Avery Brundage, President of the American Olympic Committee, who was determined to be appointed to the International Olympic Committee (of which he was later to become its president, from 1952-72). It is no coincidence that it was Brundage who was not only the key figure in overcoming resistance to the notion of the US boycotting the 1936 games, it was Brundage who was also central to the 1972 Munich Olympics carrying on even after the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes.
I admit that I knew quite a bit about Brundage’s unsavoury reputation even before reading this book, but the degree to which he connived to make sure America would be represented at the games when there was fierce opposition to exactly that position from many of the leading figures in the sports world in the US at the time is truly shocking.
But, while the historical record provides ample evidence of the extent to which Hitler and his henchmen were determined to use the Olympics as a showcase for Nazi superiority, while reading this book I couldn’t help but wonder just how much fiction was mixed with fact.
In the press release I was sent about the book, it was noted that “Based on real stories and real people involved in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, PLAYED plunges readers into a compelling, fictionalized account of the insanity and hysteria that unfolded across Germany, the United States and in much of the world from 1931 through 1936.”
I couldn’t help myself from questioning: Just how much is fact and how much is fiction in this book? Of course, given that the authors use their imaginations to conjure up the dialogue in the book, I kept thinking to myself – especially as I was reading about how sexually aggressive many of the female characters in this book were: Is this a case of two screenwriters using their past experiences writing movie scripts as an excuse to infuse something that might be passed off as a largely historical account with a great big dollop of licentiousness in order to attract readers?
Two of the major female characters: Martha Dodd, daughter of US Ambassador Dodd, and Eleanor Holm, a champion US swimmer, certainly led carefree sex lives – at least if you were to believe the accounts given in this book. Dodd, in particular, is such a fascinating character, because not only was she quite willing to go to bed with many Nazis (and it seemed – anyone who asked her), including Ernst “Putzi” Hanfstatengel, described as Hitler’s henchman – who would eagerly dispatch anyone Hitler wanted rid of, in time Martha Dodd ended up in the arms of a Russian spy – who himself was ordered executed by Stalin.
As for Holm, even though she was a champion in the swimming pool (in backstroke events), she hardly led a disciplined life as an athlete. In PLAYED, at least, she is one hell of a “player” – and this was well after she was married!
Unfortunately for Holm, however, one man who lusted after her – and whom she detested, was Avery Brundage. Now, I did try to find out whether the account given by Kaufman and Allen of what happened between Holm and Brundage when they were both on the same ship headed to the Berlin Olympics with the entire American team of athletes and officials, was in any way true. (In the book, Brundage attempts to rape Holm, but given her athleticism, she manages to deliver a solid kick to his nether regions – leaving him writhing in pain. The next day, he decides to kick her off the US Olympic team.) According to Holm’s own account, however, the reasons for her being booted off the team had to do with her not wanting to go to bed when she was told to do so. (I much prefer the PLAYED version – and if they ever make a movie from the book, I’m sure audiences would be much more interested in watching Holm do to Avery Brundage what a lot of women would probably fantasize about doing to men.)
Of course, the parts of the book describing some of the leading Nazis, including Hitler himself, along with Joseph Goebbels and Herman Goering, are luridly detailed – as one would expect any description of them to be, but one character who comes off quite favourably – much to my shock, is Leni Riefenstahl, the famed German filmmaker, who had already established a notorious reputation as a propagandist in her famous documentary about the 1934 Nuremburg Rally, “Triump of the Will.”
Rather than painting her as a tool of the Nazis though, the authors offer quite a sympathetic – even admiring portrait of someone who was wedded to her craft. According to this book, Riefenstahl actually fell in love with a member of the US Olympic team by the name of Glenn Morris, who goes on to win Gold in the decathlon competition. (Again, however, there is one unforgettable scene where Morris, after winning his medal, runs over to Riefenstahl, rips off her blouse, and kisses her breast. Is this a Hollywood screenwriter’s fantasy? Who knows?)
There are also many stories of Jewish athletes in this book – some of which are tragic. The female high jump champion in Germany at the time was someone by the name of Gretel Bergmann. Bergmann had gone to England prior to the Olympics knowing full well that she would not be allowed to compete for Nazi Germany. In the book, Putzi goes over to England and threatens Bergmann that she will have to return to compete for Germany, otherwise her family – who had still remained in Germany, will face severe consequences. When Bergmann reluctantly returns to Germany, Brundage points to her becoming part of the German Olympic team as a sign that the Nazis have softened their stance toward Jews, but once the American do agree to participate and cross the ocean to Germany, Bergmann develops a mysterious “injury” that prevents her from actually being part of the German team.
The book is full of such stories – so many, in fact, that your head will be spinning trying to keep track of all the characters mentioned in the book.
Still, if you want to enjoy a rollicking read that may or may not have many parts that are wholly concocted from the writers’ imaginations even though they’re writing about actual events, then you might want to give PLAYED a shot.
As for this year’s version of the Olympics, while there isn’t nearly the same dramatic tension surrounding them as there was prior to and during the 1936 Berlin Olympics, the cheating, skullduggery, and propaganda that permeated the 1936 games has forever tarnished the reputation of the Olympic Games and, while it’s a different type of antisemitism that we’re seeing on the world stage these days, we’re all holding our collective breaths wondering how Israeli athletes are going to be treated in Paris – the same way Jews were wondering how Jewish athletes were going to be treated in Nazi Germany in 1936.
PLAYED: The Games of the 1936 Berlin Olympics
Published 2024 by WordServe Publishing
419 pages
Features
Haifa University launches $60 Million ‘Home Again’ Campaign to help rebuild war- devastated northern Israel
By MYRON LOVE In early July, Haifa University announced a new campaign to help rebuild the war-devastated communities of northern Israel. The “Home Again” campaign aims to raise $60 Million for regional recovery – and the Canadian Friends of Haifa University is set to do its part.
“We at CFHU hope to raise $1-million or more from our donors across Canada toward the campaign,” reports Ariel Karabelnicoff, executive director of Canadian Friends of Haifa University.
In an earlier interview that was published in this newspaper last year, the former Winnipegger – now in his third year with CFHU – noted that the University of Haifa is among the largest universities in Israel, but is also the youngest. Fully accredited in 1972, he said, the university has an enrollment of 18,000 students – with a student body that reflects the diversity of Israel’s population. About 40% of the students come from the Druze, Circassian and Arab communities and – among the Jewish students – there are many whose families are from Ethiopia.
The University of Haifa, Karabelnicoff added, also boasts the highest percentage among Israeli universities of students who are the first generation in their families to attend university.
The new initiative, he reports, aims to “restore and revitalize the north through science, innovation, and data-driven research rooted in community priorities and focused on real-world outcomes. “
While the campaign, Karabelnicoff points out, was originally conceived to address the cascading crises that first began on October 7, 2023, the urgency has become even greater due to direct missile strikes on Haifa and surrounding areas during the short war with Iran in April.
“The devastation brought mass displacement, overwhelmed public services, and deepened strain on communities already struggling to recover from months of conflict,” Karabelnicoff notes. “The campaign now represents not just regional recovery, but a cornerstone of Israel’s national resilience strategy for the post-conflict era. “
Karabelnicoff quotes University of Haifa President Professor Gur Alroey as stating that “in this moment of national crisis, when Israel’s northern communities have been tested like never before, University of Haifa is stepping forward to turn trauma into transformation. What was already a crucial mission of recovery after October 7 has become an existential imperative following the devastation of recent weeks. We are not just restoring what was lost, we are building the foundation for Israel’s long-term future—something stronger, more resilient, and more just.”
In the aftermath of October 7, Alroey reports, Hezbollah rockets devastated northern towns, triggering the largest internal displacement in Israel in decades. More than 68,000 people—families, farmers, and seniors—became refugees in their own country. Today, less than half have returned home. As Iranian long-range missiles threatened the north, communities faced not just a security crisis but a comprehensive breakdown in public health, education, employment, and social cohesion. In rural and peripheral areas, rehabilitation beds are scarce, mental health services are overwhelmed, and economic life has ground to a halt.
Karabelnicoff notes that the Home Again campaign is offering a coordinated, data-informed strategy, anchored in real-time research, local partnerships, and measurable programs across three core pillars.
The first is a multi-front recovery strategy – led by emotional and physical rehabilitation specialists affiliated with the university – for one of the region’s greatest invisible burdens – trauma.
“PTSD has surged by 33% among residents,” Karabelnicoff reports, “with children and parents bearing some of the deepest scars.”
Simultaneously, he continues, northern hospitals are ill-equipped to meet rising demands for complex rehabilitation care. The university is addressing both gaps.
The university is addressing this issue through mental health teams operating rapid-response networks – including the establishment of 24/7 hotlines and mobile therapeutic units. As well, the university’s Cheryl Spencer Nursing School is training more frontline responders to assess and manage trauma – and a proposed Community Rehabilitation and Research Center, spearheaded by Dr. Hilla Sarig Bahat, would merge academic research with hands-on clinical care—the first model of its kind in Israel.
The second focus is aimed at restoring economic stability and regional capacity in the north. With unemployment in the north spiking nearly 50%, Karabelnicoff points out, “the university is launching targeted workforce initiatives designed to meet immediate needs and build long-term regional capacity. These include specialized training programs for nurses, educators, trauma specialists, and environmental rehabilitation professionals. Additionally, discharged soldiers are being offered re-skilling opportunities in sustainable marine industries tied to Israel’s northern coastline, connecting economic recovery to national resilience.”
The final prong in the University of Haifa’s new initiative is focused on investing in community futures through real-time legal aid clinics, AI-assisted social service platforms, and coexistence-building programs that will bring Jewish and Arab residents together in the workplace.
“The university is working to restore both public trust and strategic cohesion,” Karabelnicoff says. “Researchers are partnering with kibbutzim, regional councils, and national ministries to revitalize schools, renew cultural life, and strengthen the social fabric at a time when national solidarity is dangerously frayed.”
For readers interested in contacting Ariel about supporting this new Canadian Friends of Haifa University initiative, his email address is ariel.karabelnicoff@haifa-univ.ca.
Features
Trump’s Nobel Peace Prize Quest And the Ukraine War
By HENRY SREBRNIK In a recent letter nominating U.S. President Donald Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel heaped praise on the diplomatic deals known as the Abraham Accords, establishing diplomatic relations between his country and three Arab states.
Netanyahu called the 2020 accords, brokered by Trump, “breakthroughs” that had “reshaped the Middle East,” making a “historic advance toward peace, security and regional stability.” Trump brokered the treaties between, initially, Israel, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, signed at the White House that September 15.
As I wrote at the time, Trump deserved the prize, but his detractors saw to it that it was instead awarded to the World Food Program, “for its efforts to combat hunger, for its contribution to bettering conditions for peace in conflict-affected areas and for acting as a driving force in efforts to prevent the use of hunger as a weapon of war and conflict.”
A worthy organization, of course, but it could have been granted the prize in any year since its foundation in 1961. Trump deserved the prize, but didn’t get it, due to animosity from the international liberal elites.
By 2021 Trump was out of office, but he would still have been eligible. Instead. the prize went jointly to Maria Ressa, a Filipino-American journalist and investigative reporter for CNN and a professor at Columbia University, and Dmitry Andreyevich Muratov, founder of a pro-democracy Russian newspaper, for “their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace.” Again, more of a “human rights” award than a diplomatic effort to end armed conflict.
Trump has long sought a Nobel Prize and has publicly questioned the decision to award the honour in 2009 to former president Barack Obama, who had barely entered the White House at the time. This time around, despite lingering bias, I think Trump will receive it. He can’t be overlooked — because he is really bringing at least a modicum of peace between longtime foes around the world.
The August 8 agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan notched another victory for him. The photograph of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan shaking hands, with a smiling Trump holding both their arms, should alone do it. And it comes after a series of such deals. He spent much of his appearance promoting his administration’s role in overseas peace processes. His last such success came at the end of July, when he intervened to bring Cambodia and Thailand to the negotiating table after a border dispute.
Trump claimed involvement in a May ceasefire between India and Pakistan, two nuclear powers, though India denied, for domestic reasons, that the U.S. was a major actor. In June, he celebrated a peace agreement brokered by the U.S. between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, doing so with a signing in the Oval Office.
“Today’s signing follows our success with India and Pakistan. They were going at it. They were going at it big,” Trump reminded people. “Also the Congo and Rwanda. Now that was one, which was going on for 31 years, and we have it all done, and people are very happy.”
Several world leaders have said they were nominating Trump for the prize, including Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet. Among others, the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan have expressed their support. Pashinyan and Aliyev said that they believe Trump deserves the Nobel Peace Prize and that they will advocate on his behalf to the Norwegian Nobel Committee. Aliyev remarked that what Trump did in six months was a “miracle.”
Now comes the hardest part: the horrific Russia-Ukraine war. It has become Trump’s obsession to end it and enter the history books as a peacemaker. The symbolism of Trump meeting Vladimir Putin on the tarmac in Anchorage, Alaska August 15 was a photograph that undoubtedly made it to the front pages of every newspaper in the world. Prior to the meeting, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party candidate who lost the presidential election to Trump in 2016, said she would nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize if he managed to pull off this extremely challenging feat!
Of course, the Alaska summit was actually just a first step. The ball is now in Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s court. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Aug. 20 that Russia would agree to Western security guarantees for Ukraine only if Russia and China have a veto.
Russia’s list of demands includes assurance that Ukraine will not join NATO. Conversely, Moscow will have to accept an eventual Ukrainian accession to the European Union. Remember: unlike the U.S. and Europe, neither Russia nor Ukraine can afford to lose. Both — yes, both — see themselves up against the wall.
A redrawing of national borders seems inevitable. Much of Donetsk, Luhansk, and of course all of Crimea, with their Russophone populations, will likely remain Russian. On the other hand, Ukraine will become a far more homogenous nation state, perhaps a step towards its greater democratization. Otherwise, the war will continue.
And I haven’t even mentioned Gaza.
As for Trump’s Nobel? The road ahead is rough, but it will still be a sure thing.
Henry Srebrnik is a professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island.
Features
How beginners can profit from crypto
There are some people who have made money through investing in cryptocurrency. However, how can crypto help you make a profit if you are a beginner who doesn’t have a lot of technical expertise? Here is a list of some of the ways you can make money with crypto without having a lot of experience in the subject.
Get in early
One way you can, potentially, earn money from crypto without needing any deep technical knowledge is by finding opportunities to get in on the ground floor. If you study any upcoming crypto launches by, for instance, looking at the list of new crypto presales from Best Wallet, you might find a coin or token which you could make a profit from. Very often, a cryptocurrency’s presale price is lower than what it trades at when it first appears on the open market. So, if you are careful, do your own research, and have luck on your side, you could make a profit from a cryptocurrency presale.
Earn interest
If you want to make a profit in a slow but sure manner, then earning interest on a crypto savings account might just be for you. Much like a traditional, fiat, savings account, your money is lent out to borrowers or, in some cases, put into liquidity pools, and you earn interest, which can be as much as 10 per cent. Most major exchanges will let you do this, and they are often pretty user-friendly, too, so it won’t require a great deal of crypto expertise. If you do put your money into a savings account, make sure you research the platform and start with a small amount, the sort of amount of crypto you could afford to lose. It also helps if you diversify somewhat and use different platforms to avoid the risk of losses.
Earn as you learn
While the debate between centralized and decentralized exchanges isn’t going to go away at any point soon, something that can work in favor of centralized exchanges is how they can give you free crypto in the form of learn-to-earn programs. These involve surveys and quizzes about particular cryptocurrencies, which reward players with some of the subject cryptos once they have completed them. Although the rewards are not exactly massive – usually a few dollars’ worth of the said crypto – they are real. What is, perhaps, even more useful is that the quizzes are educational, so you won’t just gain crypto from doing them, you will also learn more about the whole cryptosphere.
Keep loyal
If you’ve been shopping at any point this century, the chances are that you will be familiar with the concept of loyalty cards. These give you rewards for doing your shopping, or eating and drinking, at a specific chain or store. And what’s true of traditional retail is becoming ever more commonplace with cryptocurrency. Whether it’s with crypto debit cards, which give users rewards in the form of crypto, shopping platforms such as StormX or Lolli offering points, or travel sites like Travala giving customers crypto cashback, there are plenty of ways in which you can get crypto just by getting things you would normally get. And, better yet, they usually just need you to sign up and link your card to your account, so there’s no mining or staking or anything like that. As ever, though, make sure that you read the small print and check that you comply with any tax requirements for any coins or tokens earned via a crypto loyalty program.
Hold steady
Crypto investors who make money know when to get into a market and come out of it. However, one thing that can work in your favor is the simple act of buying and holding crypto. Now, this isn’t foolproof. Firstly, because nothing is foolproof and, secondly, because prices can go down as well as up. That said, there is a theory that, ultimately, this is the best way to make money with crypto, because it can involve a long-term strategy. You will, however, need to make sure that you do your own research, remember that prices can go down as well as up, and never invest more than you can afford to lose. It also helps to be patient, because you might not see a profit you want to take for quite some time. So just buying and holding can help you turn a crypto profit without having to study the technical intricacies of cryptocurrency.