Kaufmann playing for DEG Metro Stars in the German ice hockey league. He will represent Germany in Minsk, Belarus, over the weekend
An ice hockey star who lost numerous members of his family in the Nazi Holocaust is poised to become one of a handful of Jewish sportsman to represent Germany since the Second World War.
Evan Kaufmann, who plays for the Duesseldorf-based Metro Stars, will play for the German national team at the weekend in Belarus with the weight of history on his shoulders.
The 28-year-old, who was born in the U.S., qualifies to play for Germany through his grandfather Kurt, who survived concentration camps to flee with his sister to America.
His great grandparents and several cousins were also murdered in the Nazi gas chambers during World War Two.
The forward has said he will be proud to represent Germany in the Belarus Cup in Minsk.
He said: 'I didn't have to think hard about it. It is a great honour but it will also be a very emotional moment for me when I hear the national anthem played.
Mr Kaufmann said he has felt at home since coming to Germany in 2008 and his parents regularly cross the Atlantic to visit him.
They have paid homage to the small town on the Mosel river where his grandfather, who died in 1990, came from.
He added: 'Before the offer came to play in Germany I never even thought about it. But since I made the decision I have had no regrets.
He took German citizenship in order to be able to play for the national team and is among the top scorers in the German ice hockey league.
Mr Kaufmann admits his teammates are 'very curious' about him being Jewish and often ask him questions.
But he has never before admitted that he lost family members in the Nazi extermination programme which claimed six million Jews in Europe and he is believed to be the first to represent Germany.
Jewish people participated in sports at all levels before the Nazis came to power and excelled in many of them.
But they were excluded due to the racial laws which made them second-class citizens and most were unable to represent their country at the 'Nazi' Olympics of 1936.
Many sporting heroes died in the Holocaust along with millions of their countrymen.
They included Alfred Flatow, the 1896 Olympic individual and team parallel bars winner who was deported at the age of 73 to the Theresienstadt ghetto in Czechoslovakia where he died.
Others were 1920 champion shot putter Lili Henoch, murdered along with her mother by an S.S. death squad in Latvia in 1942, and Werner Seelenbinder, a German wrestler who finished fourth in the 1936 Olympics competition who was beheaded after joining an anti-Hitler group in 1944.
Several footballers capped for the national team were also deported east and murdered.
Of a community of more than 500,000 before the Nazi regime took power in 1933, there were just 5,000 Jews left at the end of the war.
The country's Jewish population has boomed in recent years following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Many young Israelis now also choose to come and live in Germany, some of them to escape military service in their homeland.
Since the end of the Second World War, Sarah Poewe, a South African with a Jewish mother, swam in the Olympics for Germany in 2004. She was the first Jewish female athlete to represent the country.
Herbert Klein, also a swimmer, appeared at the Helsinki games in 1952
The recent New York Times article about Kaufmann stated, "There are still times, he said, he wonders whether he is doing the right thing. What would his grandfather think?"
ReplyDeleteIt may not mean very much, but I am another American resident of Germany, and I think Kaufmann is definitely doing the right thing, and his grandfather would be proud of him.