Back to Berlin (2018) - full transcript

In the late 19th century,

a Jewish sports movement sprang up

called the Maccabiah.

It was often the only

outlet for Jewish athletes

who were excluded from

their local national clubs.

It's philosophy was to encourage Jews

to become physically strong,

to combat anti-Semitism and to imbue them

with a national identity.

In a series of bold and

innovative PR exercises,

groups of bikers set out

for the British Mandate of Palestine

to find athletes to take part

in the first Maccabiah games

in Tel Aviv in 1932.

The games would offer the

athletes and their families

a safe haven for the increasing

persecution in Europe.

Now 80 years later, for

the first time ever,

the games will be held in Berlin,

the crucible of Hitler's final solution.

11 bikers embark on a unique journey

setting off from Israel, they

carry the Maccabiah torch

to Berlin.

For some, it's a chance

to learn about the past,

for others it's a chance to reveal it.

This is a story of survival,

redemption and discovery,

a journey that will take

them "Back to Berlin."

Among them is Gal Marom

who's grandfather, Solomon

was one of the original riders.

I live in ,

I'm an architect.

In the 1930's there were

three group of bikers

that went out from

Palestine through the world

and through Europe, especially.

This is a picture that took place,

I think, in Montreal.

This is the biker, this is all the guys

from the Jewish community.

And basically what's weird in this photo

that this is my grandfather and someone

or maybe he wrote his name,

Solomon here under his image.

There were 11 bikes and

I think the number 11

was like the 11 tribes that

went to bring the lost tribe

from around the world.

My grandfather was actually my father

and he raised me as a son.

He was a boxer and a boxing referee.

He was a role model for me.

And of course he raise me on his stories

about his childhood.

And of course, one of the

big stories that is with me

until today is about this

journey around the world

to spread the rumor about the Maccabiah.

When Maccabiah

organized their own games

in Berlin, Gal had the

opportunity to retrace

his grandfather's journey.

He joined 10 other male and female bikers,

some of them relatives

of Holocaust survivors.

Among them, Danny and his

78-year-old father, Yoram.

- I'm Danny Maron, son of Yoram

and I'm a press

photographer here in Israel

for the last 25 years

and I'd like to try the

journey with my father.

For me it was a huge opportunity

to understand and to know

something about my father

and my family history.

- There were two reasons

why I decided to go.

One, physically, to prove to myself

that I still can ride more

than 400 kilometers a day

and the second one was a ride to my past.

It was something that I could only dream

to arrive at the Olympics Stadium

in Berlin with my son.

In 1936, the Olympic games

were hosted by Germany.

In direct contrast to Olympic ideals,

the Nazi party used the games

to spread it's propaganda

of Aryan supremacy.

The world outside Germany

claimed to know little

about Hitler's anti-Semitic agenda

until he issued a ban on

German-Jewish athletes

participating in the 1936 games.

There was an international outcry

followed by threats of boycott.

Hitler relented and reluctantly allowed

only one German Jew to compete.

As the American delegation

set sail from New York,

on board were Marty

Glickman and Sam Stoller,

the only two Jews on the

American track and field team.

- As an athlete this

was a goal for any track

and field performer to

make the Olympic team

and to participate in the Olympic games

and perhaps even to win a medal,

perhaps even a gold medal.

I can show the rest of

the world that a Jew

could be just as good as anyone else.

The two Jewish

athletes were preparing

for the men's four by 100 meter relay race

when there was a shock announcement.

- Well the morning of

the day we're supposed

to run the relay, all the sprinters

were called into a

meeting and Robinson said,

"Marty and Sam are gonna

be replaced by Jesse Owens

and Ralph Metcalf."

That was a complete shock to all of us.

The ritual of

carrying the Olympic torch

from Greece to the host city

was resurrected in Germany in 1936

to mark the transfer of

power from Olympia to Berlin.

For today's riders, the

passing of the torch

will carry a greater significance.

- Like the Germans in 1936 Olympic games,

we are carrying the torch

from Athens to Berlin

but we do a small detour.

Carrying

the torch back to Berlin

will cover nearly 3,000 miles of roads

across southern and central Europe.

The journey will be challenging in ways

that none of them could have expected.

The bikes leave the Port of

Haifa on the coast of Israel

and travel to Athens in Greece

where the riders discover

that flying the Israeli flag

may prove problematic.

- I don't think it's a good idea.

I'm really sorry to say this.

- That's really shocking I must say.

- Yes and it's probably

the only flag in the world

that you cannot raise in Greece so easy.

The bikers

travel north from Athens

to Greece's second

largest city Thessaloniki,

the home of Kobi's

grandparents before the war.

- It was too hot, I couldn't

stay inside in there.

I joined this journey two months pregnant

and I'm trying to imagine

people, women inside,

maybe pregnant, little children,

10 days on the train going nowhere,

they don't know where

they're going without food,

without water.

We are always hearing about

Holocaust but to feel the train,

to feel the heat, to hear the story,

I don't know, I can't even

explain what I'm feeling,

it's too much, it's too much.

In Cyprus, the

camps are bitter reminders

of the recent past.

Here 60,000 illegals are forced to stay.

In rebellion,

newcomers shout of Dachau,

Birkenau, Auschwitz but it's to no avail.

Under a quota, only 750 people a month

will be allowed into Palestine.

And under armed guard they wait,

neither starved nor beaten,

nor tortured, but

prisoners without identity,

behind barbed wire again.

From Cyprus, it's but a

night's journey to Palestine.

From Greece, the

bikers travel on from Bulgaria

which holds a personal

significance for Gilly Shem Tov.

- I am very nervous and

I'm very excited to be here

because I've never been to Bulgaria

and I never learned my

family past in Bulgaria,

only since they came to

Israel, I know some details

but not from Bulgaria.

My grandfather was born here in Samokov.

He always talked about Samokov

and as his place of birth,

Samokov was in his heart.

And he was very special for me.

All his life he stood up

for the working people,

fighting for social injustice.

I think a lot of thing he

got from here from Bulgaria,

by being involved in the

community, the Bulgarian community,

not only the Jewish community.

He joined Maccabiah here in

Bulgaria when he was young,

learned Hebrew, learned how to work farms

and he taught me that everyone are equal.

Not all of the

atrocities of the Holocaust

were perpetrated by the Nazis themselves.

As the bikers cross the

border into Romania,

they're met by another

rider who would join them

on the next leg of

their journey to Berlin.

- I am Maxmillia Marco Katz.

I am an business manager

and administrator.

I am from Romania.

What happened in this

synagogue in January 1941,

it was that my grandfather, Marco Katz,

the one that I'm named

after, he was here praying

together with other Jews from Bucharest.

The Legionnaires pulled all

the Jews out of the synagogue,

among them my grandfather and

they started to torture him.

My uncle, Isador Katz begged

them to release his father

and to take him in his place.

They did not release the old

man but they kept the son.

In the front of the old man,

they started to torture the son.

The Romanian

fascists took Marco's uncle,

together with 155 other

Jews to one of their centers

for torture, Jilava Fort number 13.

- So my uncle was brought here.

He was brought here when he had already,

one of the shoulder pulled out.

I don't know how I feel, I'm

just trying to figure out

how my uncle felt when

he was brought here.

They were brought from the

fort here, stripped naked

beaten up and then shot in their heads.

So this is the way Isador

Katz, my uncle died.

Other Jews they were taken

in the center of Bucharest

to a slaughter house and 15 of them,

they were killed there in the

same manner, they were shot

and then they were hanged.

They were hooked up and

on their naked bodies

there was written kosher meat.

- So my name is Yaron Munz, I'm a surgeon.

When I knew about this project, for me,

it was the Romanian Holocaust

because nobody would even know

that there were Holocaust in Romania,

actually they didn't know.

And my parents are survivors,

so I felt the Holocaust

when I was brought up.

And for me I actually thought that

well I can't understand how

so many people could have gone

and perish without any resistance,

so I sometimes used to talk

about them on that issue

and I never got any

cooperation from mother,

neither from my father they

said, "Okay it wasn't like that,

but we don't wanna talk about it."

The Romanian Army came into the village.

They had a loud speaker and

they said by tomorrow morning

everybody has to come with

one suitcase and leave

all of your belongings back,

take only what necessary

and all the families and

come to the train station.

This is how it started.

And my mother remembers

her mother, holding her up

to have some air because

they were stuffed.

- When was that?

- 41 June yeah.

My grandfather at the time

was caught by the Legionnaires

it was about mid-1940.

And he was jailed, tortured, beaten

and the only thing that

saved him was the earthquake

that was in Romania of 1940.

Everything collapsed in that building

where the Legionnaires office was.

He was hanged upside down,

totally beaten, bruised

and so on but he fell down,

he could open the bondings

and so on and he escaped

and it took him a few months

to get back

because of his situation.

- In order to feel what

they you need to be

in that location at that

time in that condition.

- But this is the thing,

Marco, I don't wanna feel

what they feel, I already

understand what they feel,

I understand, I understand.

My dad is not talking at all, I can't,

whenever I talk to him and

he's totally clear in his mind,

he doesn't talk.

- He refuses.

- Yeah, he kinda refused to talk about it.

It's a black hole.

When we arrived the bikes in Romania,

we loved the biking there.

Went through the lovely

mountains and it was amazing.

The biking part of this story is kinda,

it's not just to bring us

from A to B with the bike,

it's a very important

part of the whole thing,

it's a tour, we're doing a

tour, like half of Europe

or something like that.

I don't pretend to make my

story bigger than any story,

I think all the stories in

this tour are small stories

that are part of the bigger picture.

All the stories were horrific in the same,

it's like the same, it's

just different people,

more people died in one

place than the other,

but still it was the same Holocaust.

When the 1936 Olympics ended,

Hitler ramped up his

campaign against the Jews.

The Jews of

London are marching today

to denounce Adolf Hitler's

anti-Semitic policy.

It became

increasingly difficult

for the world to ignore.

Of German-made goods.

As the team

travels along the border

between Hungary and Serbia,

they're met by thousands

of refugees and hundreds of border police,

armed guards and troops.

- Unbelief, we go into a

country, a border like this.

It's sad to see.

- We are from Israel.

- In my school,

they say Israel is my enemy

you have to fight Israel

and you have to destroy Israel.

- No, it's closed okay.

- Near Rozke.

- Yeah, near Rozke.

- Is it open, the border?

- The small one is open,

the big one is closed.

- Oh okay.

- It's not a biking trip,

it was really a journey

for everyone of us.

All the time I heard my

grandfather in my head

and tried to connect to his

experience along the way.

But the difference between them and today

is that those days they

could go up on their bikes

and just drive around the

world without any customs,

without any borders.

They went to Alexandria, they

went to Libya, to Lebanon.

Even one expedition I heard

that went through Syria.

The 1935 bikers,

set off amidst a backdrop

of growing anti-Semitism.

In September of the

same year, Nazi Germany

had created it's Nuremberg laws

which had a crippling

economic and social impact

on the Jewish community.

They were subsequently

expanded to include homosexuals

all roamly people,

Afro-Germans and the disabled.

These people became what Germany called,

enemies of a race-based state.

Despite this threat to their safety,

the 1935 bikers continued

their epic mission,

visiting Jewish communities

to spread their message.

And today's riders are doing the same.

- My mother will never speak

about the Holocaust, never

because she don't want I am

a void emotion about that.

After all I am starting

to ask the questions

about the Holocaust, it's coming for me.

This is I think, it's better.

Whoa, it's alive.

- We ride with the Israeli flags on,

what do you think the

response we're going to get?

- Some people might not

be happy and some people

might just okay Israelis.

- I'm a mother of two children,

boy and girl, Jade and

James, I'm a farmer.

I have a personal connection

to everything that happened

with the Maccabiah games.

My grandmother was

photographed with those bikers

that came to Lithuania to tell

about the Maccabiah games.

To think that after I got

involved with all this journey,

to think that my grandmother

actually met those bikers

for me was a huge, huge excitement.

My grandparents left Europe from Lithuania

just before the Holocaust and

they left when they realized

that life in Europe became too

dangerous and too difficult

for Jews, they made a

choice and the choice was

to look at what happened and move on

and find a new place for them to live in.

And their decision saved their life.

Their entire family was

destroyed in the Holocaust.

As the bikers

travel further into Hungary,

they reach the banks of the River Danube,

a sight of an atrocity at the hands

of the Hungarian

fascists, the Arrow Cross.

They meet Alex Rosencrass who's

mother survived the offense

of the Danube in 1944.

Alex has traveled from

Berlin to meet the bikers

with his daughter, Talia and

to share his mother's story

with them for the first time.

They've come to memorial site

for those who were brought here

as part of Hungary's final

solution offering to Hitler.

They were rounded up in

the thousands, their shoes

removed for monetary value.

And their laces used to bind their hands.

- My mother's family who

lived here before the war,

very family in positions

and in the 1944 the Jews were

killed here at the Danube.

And what happened is

that the Hungarian Nazis,

they're called Arrow Cross,

they came to these houses

with trucks and they brought

them here to the Danube

and they killed them

here, they shot them here

and threw them into the water.

And the whole Danube was

red for days and days

it was a red river cause all

the thousands of dead Jews.

My mother was sitting on one of the trucks

and what happened is that

German Nazi officer came by,

saw my mother who was so beautiful

and he forced her down from this truck

and sent her back to the house

and so she survived.

And all the others on the

truck were killed here

at the Danube, nobody came back.

That's the story of my

mother, how she survived.

She came after that into a labor camp

where she escaped from that

and that's what I know.

Not too many of her family survived.

- I was shocked I didn't

know what happened here.

I've never heard the story.

I didn't know how his mother was saved.

It's a beautiful story in some way

and a terrible one too of course.

As the bikers

travel in convoy through Budapest

their presence causes

concern for the authorities.

An a police escort is provided.

- I wasn't happy with the police escort.

They come with us in Greece

or in Poland or in Hungary

because I want to know what will happen

if we drive with our flag,

with the Israeli by ourself

all over Europe.

And I was curious to see

if something happened.

The Jews that we met in

Europe during our journey,

they have a conflict, a big conflict,

maybe not to show to everybody

they are still a Jew.

It doesn't matter what country you are.

If it's in Germany or Greece or Poland,

the Jews prefer to hide

their identity even now.

- Ladies and gentlemen our

dear friends a warm welcome

to the motorcyclists from Israel.

It's a great honor and

pleasure to welcome you here

on your way to Berlin.

You riding in Hungary

with the Israeli flag,

it's something else, it shows

that in spite of everything,

we are here, welcome.

- Everybody would like to drink something,

so we would like to offer you

Hungarian beer zero alcohol,

zero alcohol.

That's not a beer.

It's in Poland that the team

makes it's planned detour

for the route taken

by the original bikers to visit a place

that predecessors could

scarcely have imagined.

- That's Krakow we're

gonna go west to Krakow.

We're gonna go through

three countries today.

We're gonna leave Hungary

and then we're going through

Slovakia, beautiful road

and then we're going to go to Poland.

We can reach in one day.

- Lots of family there.

- Yeah.

- You don't come in from

Canada on a motorcycle.

- I tried, I tried.

I'm from Toronto, Canada.

My family originated from Poland.

I was born in Sandomiez

which is east of Krakow.

My family both sides were

very dramatically affected

by the war and the Holocaust.

- Is it your first time here?

- No, no I was born here.

- And I'm not unique.

Those that are predominately

children of survivors,

they have the same issues that I had.

They call their parents damaged goods.

- I mean, this is a

guy who has been there,

for me it was shocking.

I all of a sudden realize

we have with us somebody

that experienced this thing

that when you look at it,

it looks so far away but there we was

and I was so attached to hear him.

When you hear one person's story

it tells you the story of everyone else

that can't tell their story.

- I think I was born July 13th, 1942.

And my mother at that time knowing what

was coming down the pipe made arrangements

which she had blue eyes, blonde hair

made arrangements for a phony I.D.

to give birth at the Convent

Hospital in Sandomeiz.

So these people took us

in and then my mother left

and they raised me as one of their own.

Have you been with the family?

- About three and a half years.

- And you thought they were

your parents or you knew?

- No, no.

- And your mother came or she didn't see--

- My mother came afterwards.

- After three

and a half years.

- After three

and a half years.

- Where had she been

all this time?

- With the Polish underground.

- Oh really?

- Yeah.

- And she was nervous, she

came there originally with me

and then she was nervous

that she would be found out

so she left.

- And how did you react when you realized,

I know you were only three and a half but.

- When I was born I didn't react.

- You hardly have memories.

- But my psychiatrist tells

me that I still remember okay

but she came to pick me up

when I was three and a half

she took me away from my mother.

And we asked the nephew of

the people that saved me

what made them do it and

why didn't other people

have the chance to do it?

And the answer's always the same

they were that kind of people.

They did it because they

felt they needed to,

they had to, so.

- When you always think

about the people who helped,

you wonder how you do.

- How you would do it,

if you were in the same position.

- If you were on the other

side would you keep quiet.

- Where's the plaque.

Oh is this it?

Yeah, you see.

- That's the synagogue.

- Yeah.

It's a former synagogue

till the end of 17th,

the present house city archives.

The riders push on to Warsaw.

In 1939, there were more than 350,000 Jews

living in the Polish capital.

In the autumn of 1940, the Nazis sealed

the entire Jewish

population into the ghetto.

- How they went like cattle

to the slaughter house.

We cannot now judge them

and we cannot put ourself

in their position in those days

because I'm not sure if I were in this era

how I'm supposed to

react and cope with it.

The remaining

prisoners of the Warsaw ghetto

realized that the deportations

were sending people

to their deaths.

In January 1943, after smuggling

in handguns and small explosives,

a tiny resistance group

fought back seizing control

of the ghetto from the Nazis.

Three months later on the eve of Passover,

the Nazis mounted a

massive counter attack.

They bombarded the ghetto

and raised it to the ground,

murdering anyone they could find.

Meanwhile delegates from

Britain and America met

for 10 days in Bermuda

to discuss Hitler's plans

for the Jewish people.

Despite the horrors unfolding in Europe,

no agreement was reached

and no action was taken.

The prisoners at Lodz Ghetto

were forced to manufacture

goods and weapons

for the Nazi war machine.

Survival was based on ability to work.

Lodz was one of the last

of the Jewish ghettos

to be liquidated.

That moment I

had seen the

and immediate I had seen

my cell with my mother

and the train station with the

same transport

and we have seen and I was ashamed.

I wanted to escape from there.

I felt very

angry seeing all the names,

like you wanna help them and say stop it.

People that were sent to death

only because they were Jews.

I was looking for

my friend's family's name

but too many names

there to try to find it.

It's just unbelievable.

- Two things get me here

one is my mother was hiding

in the forest with the

partisans for almost four years.

It could have been here, who knows

and then maybe a spot over there,

Germans brought a thousand

Jews and shot them.

When I see these guys

here these 45 all going

on 50 young Israelis,

that's one of the reasons

that it's not gonna happen again.

They won't let it happen again.

It's interesting to experience

this on a motorcycle.

I've experienced it a

lot of different ways,

never like this so.

The most important

thing for me is to really

to feel free, driving a

bike you really ascribe

from all troubles you may have.

By late 1944,

the allies were beginning

to uncover some of the atrocities

that had befallen Europe's Jews

and other ethnic minorities.

However, the German propaganda

machine was still determined

to sell a different story.

Denmark had requested that the Red Cross

inspect the conditions of

the almost 500 Danish Jews

held in the ghetto at Theresienstadt.

The Germans gathered their

healthy Jews together

dressed them in respectable clothing,

beautified the camp and

readied it for inspection.

A propaganda film was

made at the same time.

- This was the Nazi propaganda

film to show the world

how well the Jews were treated.

Two Jewish teams had to play each other

and four of them was the Maccabiah players

and it was in 1944.

Three weeks later after

this football match,

they and the audience 47,000 people

were sent to the death camps.

Pause awhile as you pass by.

Close your eyes and remember,

remember the time when here or near here

men, women and children,

our own fellow creatures

congregated in peace and trust

only to be arrested, humiliated,

deported and murdered

in the camps that shall

forever shame our civilization.

Remember them their

anguish and their death.

Do not recoil in such

horror, do not descend

into despair at man's inhumanity to men,

just remember for

remembering we honor the dead

and we save them from

dying again in oblivion.

After 24 days, traveling

through eight European

countries, the riders

are on the final leg of their journey.

As I understood you

had a very comfortable ride.

Yeah, but now after a little delay of--

- Just two hours delay.

- We met here so, straight to Berlin.

We have a very nice

road, which we came here

but now we will go on the highway, yeah.

Great.

- When the highway ends we

turn to the right, right

and then left.

Okay, no worries.

And then we will come to the Brown Brigade

and this is the road where

the Nazis loved to march.

- You know in the particular moment

when we saw Brown Brigade

everything exploded.

It was exciting, it was

like a victory parade.

For me wasn't the torch itself.

The focus was the people.

A lot of things to pass along the way

to be in Auschwitz, in Lutz, in Warsaw.

And of course, in

and Berlin, Bulgaria,

and that

everyone told his story

or his family's story.

- I'm very happy and I

hope that this is a sign

that never again, Holocaust.

- Of course I admire my father more,

much more when I know the history.

I can say that for my mind, he's a hero.

Arriving at Olympiastadion,

the riders have finally completed

the nearly 3,000 mile

journey back to the site

of the infamous 1936 Olympics.

- Yeah, the president of

Germany is gonna be here

and we're gonna close all this VIP block

and then we're gonna

park in two lines okay.

- My cousin was supposed to

run here in the '36 Olympics

and they wouldn't let him run.

Relatives of the

two Jewish-American athletes

who were dropped on the

morning of the 1936 relay race

are here to take the torch from the bikers

to signal the beginning of

the European Maccabiah games.

As the bikers enter the

stadium, Sam Stoller's cousin

passes to the torch to

Marty Glickman's daughter

who is proudly wearing her father's

originally 1936 uniform.

Nancy Glickman

please light the torch.

- About three years ago I find out about

all these biker stories and I thought that

as is the first time they're

going to have the games

in Germany it was going to

be a historic moment in time

to come back here and to light the torch.