BERLIN (AP) – Europe’s largest Jewish sporting event is coming to Germany for the first time, bringing more than 2,000 Jewish athletes together from around the world to compete at a site constructed by the Nazis for the 1936 Olympics.
The decision to host the 14th European Maccabi Games in Berlin was a difficult one, said organizer Alon Meyer, but should be seen as a “signal of reconciliation” 70 years after the end of World War II.
“There were a lot of people who said that they would never in their lives step again on German soil and we have to respect that,” Meyer, the president of Maccabi Germany, told a group of foreign reporters on Monday.
But he said “we are a new generation … and the question of guilt is long resolved.”
German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said it is a strong message to hold the event on the site of the 1936 Olympic Games held under the Nazi regime, which killed some 6 million Jews in the Holocaust.