Eugene Shenderey
 

We already met several years ago, but you have interesting information about the influence of Jews on the development of sports in the Soviet Union. Let's talk about it.

First of all, I must say that I am an expert coach of the International Gymnastics Federation for men and women, and have been a coach of the Ukrainian national team, the USSR national team, the Italian and Canadian national gymnastics teams. With the end of the war, anti-Semitism in the
Soviet Union did not disappear; on the contrary, it escalated. In Kyiv (and in other cities) there was a quota for Jews entering a university. At the
entrance exams, Jewish applicants were put in a separate row and given tasks that were impossible to complete. When a Jewish boy went home after school (and usually he was dressed better than the rest, since Jewish parents tried to give their children, if possible, the best of what was available), passing hooligans insulted him and severely beat him just because he was Jewish. This encouraged Jewish children to engage in sports. Going abroad for a Jew was possible only if he achieved the highest sports results. The government was forced to let the Jewish champions go abroad: after all, say, Botvinnik in chess could not be replaced by anyone else. But besides chess, there were also Jewish wrestlers, boxers, weightlifters, fencers, gymnasts, etc. I think that everyone is familiar with the sculpture by the famous Soviet sculptor Evgeny Vuchetich called “Let's Forge Swords into Plowshares.” It was based on the verse of the Prophet Isaiah, who wrote: “They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into sickles: people will not raise the sword against the people, and they will no longer learn to fight.” The sculpture depicts the figure of a man who forges a plowshare from a sword, symbolizing man's desire to end war and turn destructive weapons into tools for the benefit of humanity. On December 4, 1959 a copy of the sculpture was presented as a gift to the UN from the USSR. The sculpture, dedicated to the idea of world peace, quickly became famous.


I remember well the stamp with the image of this sculpture, popular in the Soviet Union.
Yes, but few people know that for the subject of the sculpture, the artist chose the figure of the Soviet wrestler Boris Gurevich, a nine-time champion of the Soviet Union, Europe, the world and the Olympic Games. No one could have thought that a Jew was represented in the world-famous image of a fighter for peace. Boris Gurevich and I have been friends since childhood. During the war, suffering from constant hunger, he and I used to grab apples from the market stalls on the run. At the railway station we dragged coal from the platforms in
order to then sell to buy bread. Boris finished only four years of school and went
to work as a loader to feed his sick mother. And it gave him tremendous physical
training. All his life he observed a strict regime: he categorically did not drink
alcohol (he came to all friendly celebrations with a bottle of sparkling water),
did not smoke, and went to bed no later than 10:30. Hearing the word “Jew”
in his direction, Boris immediately entered into fight mode, and even then his
offenders got it right. At first, Boris played for the Dynamo Kyiv society, and later
moved to CSKA - the Central Sports Club of the Army, where he was awarded
the rank of major.
I want to tell you about another Jewish athlete, Jacob Grigoryevich Punkin. He
was a Soviet wrestler, 1952 Olympic lightweight champion, USSR featherweight
champion from 1949-1951 and lightweight from 1954-1955. Honored Master
of Sports of the USSR. The first athlete, a native of Ukraine, who became an
Olympic champion. During the war, as a teenager, he ended up in Auschwitz.
Jacob had a typical Jewish appearance, not to mention circumcision, which the
Germans noticed. So, the Russian soldiers saved the boy from the Nazis, hiding
him under the bunks and covering him with all sorts of rags. When Auschwitz
was liberated, he weighed only 38 kg, and the doctor told him: “If you want to
survive, go engage in sports.” He went into wrestling because there were no
wrestlers in his super lightweight division. As a result of his experience in the
camps, the constant fear of being discovered by the Nazis, he developed an
obsessive nervous tic. His body and arms twitched in one direction, and his head
in the other. Oddly enough, in the future this shortcoming helped him become
a great wrestler: his opponents, seeing that Jacob was moving his body in a
certain direction, would begin responding in that direction. It served as a decoy
as he attacked in the opposite direction. And he often won. In 1952, in Helsinki,
he became the Olympic lightweight wrestling champion. In fact, he was a sick
person: after all, this nervous tic is associated with a psychological disorder,
from which he was never freed. And all his life he pushed himself to incredible
physical exertion, overcoming his condition in order to defeat the disease and his
opponents on his way to the gold medal.