Abraham Tokazier

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Abraham Tokazier (born September 29, 1909 in Helsinki , † April 7, 1976 in Stockholm ) was a Finnish sprinter .

Athletic career

Abraham Tokazier's father, Meier Tokazier, was born in Orsha in Belarus and was a trader by trade. He went to Finland, where he married Sara Leffkovitsch, a Finnish-born Jew. The couple had at least five children, including Abraham Tokazier and his twin brother Moses. In 1934, Abraham Tokazier took part with Moses in a hachshara in Latvia or Lithuania , a preparatory course for the colonization of Palestine and then to emigrate to Palestine . However, the brothers returned to Finland shortly after they had been in a car accident in Palestine.

Tokazier started for the Jewish sports club Makkabi Helsinki . He was one of the best sprinters in Finland and was nominated several times for international competitions. Moses Tokazier and younger brother Jakob each became multiple Finnish champions in weightlifting .

On June 21, 1938, Tokazier started a sports festival on the occasion of the opening of the Helsinki Olympic Stadium . The sports facility was built for the Olympic Games planned for 1940 , which were then canceled because of the Second World War and did not take place until 1952 . Stadium announcer Sulo Kolkka announced Tokazier's victory in the 100-meter run over the loudspeakers, which the spectators had also seen. However, the competition jury decided that he had finished fourth behind three other Finnish runners, all with 11 seconds at the finish. The next day, a photo of this run by the well-known Finnish sports photographer Akseli Neittamo appeared in Helsingin Sanomat , which is still the largest daily newspaper . It was clear from the photo that Tokazier was the winner. The newspaper subtitled the photo: "A photograph that proves that the judges were wrong."

A few weeks later, Tokazier became Finnish runner-up in the 100 meters, and in 1939 he set his personal best with 10.7 seconds. However, he felt so snubbed by the referee's wrong decision in June 1938 that he refused to accept apologies from Finnish sports officials. He later moved to Stockholm.

Background and rehabilitation

At the sports festival in 1938, guests of honor from Nazi Germany were present. It is said to have been members of the organizing committee of the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. Their presence gave sport historians reason to suspect that the Finnish finishers made no mistake when they agreed that Tokazier would win, but that it was a matter of intent: “It must therefore be assumed that the small country […] of the had not withdrawn the racist long-range effect of anti-Jewish sports policy in Nazi Germany. ”Up to this point in time, there had been no discrimination against Jewish athletes in Finland.

Historians Simo Muir and Malte Gasche suspected in their 2013 book Finland's Holocaust that Urho Kekkonen , then Minister of the Interior and President of the Finnish Sports Association Suomen Urheiluliitto (SUL) and later President of the Republic, could have asserted his influence on the judges. The association did not consider it opportune for Jewish athletes to place themselves in the top places and thus have a chance of being accepted into Finland's 1940 Olympic team. The Helsingborgs Dagblad , which in 2014 erroneously assumed that the sports festival was a Finnish championship, took the (therefore equally wrong) view that because of the high-ranking delegation from Germany they wanted to avoid a national champion of Jewish origin.

Years later, the former stadium announcer Kolkaa described the decision of the competition court as "the greatest injustice in Finnish sports life".

In 2013 the Swedish-Finnish author Kjell Westö published the novel Hägring 38 ( The Mirage ), in which he described the incident around Tokazier in detail. As a result, the SUL apologized to the von Tokazier family and conceded to Abraham Tokazier to win the 1938 race 75 years after the race and 37 years after his death by the association publishing a corrected list of winners. In principle, however, the official result can not be subsequently corrected according to the rules of the International Association of Athletics Federations .

Leo-Dan Bensky, Honorary Chairman of Makkabi Helsinki , welcomed this “first step”, but missed the clear admission that the result had been manipulated for political and racist reasons.

family

Abraham Tokazier was an uncle of the Finnish musician Hillel Tokazier .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Abraham Tokazier 1909–1976. Meliza's Genealogy, accessed March 6, 2014 .
  2. ↑ a b c d e Boris Salomon / Giselher Spitzer: Why was the Finnish Maccabi sprinter Abraham Tokazier denied victory in 1938? In: Social and Contemporary History of Sport . Meyer & Meyer, Aachen November 1999, p. 24 ff .
  3. ↑ Moses "Meishu" Tokazier 1909–1992. Meliza's Genealogy, accessed March 7, 2014 .
  4. ↑ Vuoden 1938 oikeusmurha oikaistiin - Tokazier julistettiin voittajaksi (article with target photo). Helsingin Sanomat , October 4, 2013, accessed March 7, 2014 (Finnish).
  5. ↑ a b Reinhard Wolff: A deceased comes first. taz, October 10, 2013, accessed March 6, 2014 .
  6. ↑ Gunnar Bergdahl: Hägring 2014. Helsingborgs Dagblad , January 18, 2014, accessed on March 7, 2014 (Swedish).
  7. ↑ Reinhard Wolff: A deceased comes first. In: taz.de . October 10, 2013, accessed April 11, 2017 .
  8. ↑ SUL pyytää anteeksi 75 vuotta vanhaa tuomarointivirhettä. Yle Urheilu, September 18, 2013, accessed March 6, 2014 (Finnish).
personal data
SURNAME Tokazier, Abraham
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Finnish sprinter
DATE OF BIRTH September 29, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Helsinki
DATE OF DEATH April 7, 1976
Place of death Stockholm