The Visits of Carl and Liselott Diem at the Wingate Institute, Israel, in the Shade of the Eichmann Trial (1962-3)

The summer Olympic games held in Berlin in 1936 have come to be known in the collective memory of sports history as the Nazi Olympics. Carl Diem was one of the organizers of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, and a central figure in shaping German sports in the twentieth century. Together with Theodor Lewald, he organized the Berlin 1916 Olympics. He was active in the Academy for Sports Studies in Berlin at the time of the Weimar Republic and he made the bid for the 1936 Games in Berlin. The bid was accepted by the IOC in 1931.

After the Nazis came into power in 1933 Diem continued to develop German sports. He convinced the Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels that the Games can be helpful for the Nazi regime at that time.

After the war, during the de-Nazification process was conducted by the Allied Forces in Germany, Diem was acquitted from any direct membership in the Nazi party, and declared a ‘non-Nazi’. The acquittal permitted him to renew his activity in the field of sports in Germany, and he was appointed rector of the Köln German sport University DSHS in West Germany.

In 1958, Mathethiahu Krantz, an Israeli student, turned to Willi Daume, President of the DSB, and to Carl Diem, rector of the DSHS , and asked to be accepted as a student there. Krantz studied in the Köln from 1959 until 1963 While studying he organized the departure of the first delegation from the DSHS to Israel. His offer to Carl Diem to organize a delegation was heartily accepted. Diem, who had visited Israel in 1937, always wished to return there. His request to send the delegation and to head it was easily granted by the German Office for Foreign Affairs.

At that time the Eichmann Trial took place in Israel. Stories of Holocaust survivors were brought to public and to the knowledge of Israeli society for the first time. The issue of German official visits was problematic, and emphasized reluctance concerning German public appearances in Israel. Unfortunately, Carl Diem died in December 1962 but his wife Liselott decided to come with the delegation to Israel.

This article will examine reactions of Israeli decisions makers to the visits of the organizer of the Nazi Olympics and his wife in Israel. By describing the development of relations between the Wingate Institute and the DHSK and the first visiting German student team at Wingate, I will expose the conflicts and discussions that were made before and during this visit and will discuss the ambivalence between memory vs. present and future.