Jewish Sports in Times of Persecution

Jewish sports – both in the general German associations until 1933, and in Jewish associations with various political leanings – played a vital role in the public life of Leipzig’s Jews. The history of these sports associations – primarily of the Zionist Bar Kochba Leipzig, as the biggest and most important of these – is also an integral element in the history of the Jewish community and of Leipzig in general. Bar Kochba Leipzig raised the self-confidence of Leipzig’s Jews at a time when they were disparaged, degraded and disenfranchised. At its sports ground in Leipzig-Eutritzsch, Bar Kochba, together with other Jewish organisations, prepared Jewish young people for emigration and self-rescue. Those members of the association who managed to escape continued to contribute to public life later in the State of Israel, and in the diaspora. This book also tells their stories.