Jews who fled Nazis return for games in Vienna

(Reuters)

VIENNA − Having escaped the Holocaust as boys, two 80-year-old Jewish doctors from the United States have returned to Vienna to swim in the European Maccabi Games and have the last laugh at the Nazis who tormented their youth.

Competing at the Jewish version of the Olympics caps a life intertwined for John Benfield and Arthur Figur, boyhood friends who learned to swim in Vienna, fled when Nazi Germany annexed Austria, and became successful physicians in their adopted home.

“When I heard that the Maccabi Games were going to be in Vienna I said: ‘This is right, this is something I need to do’, and even though I’m not a very good swimmer … I need to show the Nazis that we’re still around,” Benfield said in an interview.

Benfield − who was born Hans Bienenfeld − and his lifelong friend Figur are among the nearly 2,000 Jewish athletes from 37 countries competing at the European Maccabi Games, which are held every four years. The 2011 Vienna Games, which ended yesterday, are the first since World War II to be held on former Nazi territory.

“I see it in one way as a symbolic return to a country that would have annihilated me if I hadn’t escaped,” said Figur, an adventurous type who is associate medical director at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York. “I feel proud of where I was lucky enough to grow up and to come back and demonstrate that Jews are survivors.”

The two men helped to carry the United States banner at the opening ceremony.

As boys in the 1930s the two learned to swim at the Hakoah Jewish athletic club, founded in 1909 in Vienna because other sports clubs at that time did not admit Jews. Benfield’s uncle was the coach there and was married to Hedy Bienenfeld, a well-known Jewish swimmer who competed for Austria in the Olympics before a rising tide of anti-Semitism made such a thing impossible.

Vienna’s Jewish community had been a bedrock of Austrian society, producing artists, musicians, doctors and scientists of world renown. That ended as the Nazis took control, bent on eradicating Jews from Europe.

More than 70 years after fleeing the country where relatives perished, his visits − this time with a son who also swam in the Games − still made Benfield contemplative. “I have become more comfortable in being here. At the same time I am still wary of the history,” he said, noting he remained very careful when interacting with new Austrian acquaintances “because I don’t know what they think.”

He said he had reclaimed his Austrian citizenship “primarily so that I can vote, because I want to vote against the fascists. I don’t want this country again to have a fascist regime.”