This is a photograph of Martin Ratz with a sports team, probably part of Maccabi, which was taken in Krakow in 1938. The photograph shows seven young men wearing simple athletic uniforms and bibs featuring their squad number. The team is standing in a field, and it is unclear from the photograph which sport they are playing.
Under the influence of general social trends in physical culture, Jewish sports clubs became popular in twentieth-century Europe. Since Jews were often barred from membership in non-Jewish sports clubs, they created their own sports clubs such as Bar Kochba and Maccabi.
Emilia Ratz, Martin’s wife, gave an interview to Centropa about her and Martin’s family histories. Martin was born on April 14, 1921 in Vienna and moved with his family to Krakow when he was about two years old. When Martin was sixteen, his mother decided to send him to his aunt in Vienna, possibly because she believed he would have better educational opportunities there. However, in 1938, following the annexation of Austria and a year before his final exams, Martin was expelled from Austria for being Jewish.
Martin met his wife Emilia while at university in Lvov. In 1941, after German forces occupied Lvov, the couple fled to a small Russian village. In order to get to a bigger city, Martin sold his watch, his only valuable possession, in exchange for train tickets to Stalingrad (today Volgograd). As German forces approached Stalingrad, Martin and Emilia hastily married to facilitate their evacuation. As the Germans started bombing Stalingrad, the couple built a raft and crossed the River Volga to reach safety. After the war, Martin and Emilia returned to Poland to search for any living relatives. Martin’s sister, Hedy, had survived the war, but his mother, Sophie, was killed in a concentration camp. Due to the rise in anti-Semitic incidents in Poland, the Ratz family was encouraged to change their surname to a more Polish sounding name. Martin responded: “The only thing left of my family is my name, and I won’t change it!”
The family eventually decided to leave Poland and return to Vienna, where Martin passed away in 1989.
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Jewish Sports Clubs – The first Jewish sports club was founded in Constantinople in 1895 by a group of sportsmen who were barred from competing in the national sports clubs because they were Jewish. Other Jewish sports clubs, including the Bar Kochba, Hagibor (the Hero), and the Hakoach (the Power), followed suit. At the 12th World Jewish Congress, which took place in Karlsbad, Czechoslovakia in 1921, a decision was made to unite all Jewish sport associations and form one organisation named the Maccabi World Union. By the end of the 1920s, Maccabi had clubs all over Europe, in the Balkans, and in Israel with over 100,000 members.
Jewish Community of Krakow – Krakow is the second largest city in Poland and was one of the important Jewish centers in Eastern Europe before the Holocaust. Jews began living in Krakow in the fourteenth century and established themselves in the Kaimierz on the outskirts of the town, where they built a mikveh (ritual bathhouse) and a cemetery. Despite frequent conflicts with their non-Jewish neighbours, the Jewish population grew, and by the middle of the 1800s, Jews were allowed to settle in the city of Krakow itself. At this time, secular, assimilated Jews became the leaders of the community, although religious Jews also lived in the city. By 1900, over 25,000 Jews were living in Krakow, growing to 60,000 by the onset of World War II. The Germans occupied Krakow in 1939 and a ghetto was established in 1941. The ghetto was liquidated between June 1942 and March 1943, and the Jews were sent to the death camps at Auschwitz and Belzec and the slave labour camp Plazow. As depicted in the famous film Schindler's List, the German businessman Oskar Schindler saved over 1,000 Jews in his factory that was situated in Krakow. After the war, 2,000 Jews returned to Krakow. Today, approximately 1,000 Jews live in Krakow, although only about 200 are affiliated with the organized Jewish community. Of the many synagogues that were in Krakow, only seven survived the war. Three are still active, include the famous Rema Synagogue. The community also has a Jewish community centre and a Jewish kindergarten. Krakow has hosted a popular annual Jewish festival since 1990.
