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Propp, The Danube Maidens – Hakoah Vienna Girls’ Swim Team in the 1920s and 1930s 201 Erziehung und Unterricht • März/April 3-4|2018 Epilogue Judith and her family emigrated to Herzlia, Israel. She continued to swim competitively, married Dr. Pilly Haspel, the former goal keeper for the Austrian Field Hockey team, and raised three children. 14 Nearly sixty years passed. Until the day in 1995 that Rivka Rabinowitz, director of the Maccabi museum in Ramat Gan, Israel, came across Judith Deutsch’s file and photo in her archives. Rivka promptly wrote a letter to Otmar Bricks, then president of the Austrian Swimming League, explaining the injustice of erasing Judith’s record-breaking swims. Bricks apologized profusely, then invited Judith to Austria to restore her titles and re-enter her name in the official record book. Judith refused to return. She said: ‘They threw me out once. If they want to give me back my titles, they can give them to me in Israel.’ Ruth Langer, in London, received the same invitation, but not wanting to meet anyone from Austria, had her official plaque and letter of apology sent by post. 15 In June, 1995, a ceremony was held in Israel where the Austrian Ambassador to Is- rael read out an official letter of apology written by the President of the Austrian Parliament. All Deutsch’s titles and medals were restored. Judith accepted the apologies and said: ‘In no way do I regret what I did sixty years ago.’ 16 ANMERKUNGEN 1 As quoted in John Bunzl (ed.), Hoppauf Hakoah. Jüdischer Sport in Österreich. Von den Anfängen bis in die Gegenwart (Wien 1987). English translation (unpublished manuscript by John Bunzl) 82. 2 This was on a document given to me in November 2005 by Mrs. Baar when I visited her in her apartment in Vienna. 3 News of the Swimming Club Hakoah in Emigration No. 54 (July 1941), 5. 4 Zilberman (Director), Watermarks. 5 News of the Swimming Club Hakoah in Emigration No. 54 (July 1941), 3. 6 Susan D. Bachrach, The Nazi Olympics: Berlin 1936 (Little, Brown and Company 2000), 44-54. 7 Helen Epstein, Swimming Against Stereotype: The Story of a Twentieth Century Jewish Athlete (published as an Amazon Short, 2006), 12. 8 As quoted in Bunzl (Ed.), Hoppauf Hakoah, 121. 9 Ibid. 10 Interview from the University of Southern California Shoah Foundation Institute, Visual Archives. 11 Visit the Beautiful Stadionbad. In: Bunzl (Hg.), Hoppauf Hakoah, 124. 12 Obituary, The Sydney Morning Herald (August 26, 2000) 16. 13 Visit the Beautiful Stadionbad. In: Bunzl (Hg.), Hoppauf Hakoah, 124. 14 Zilberman, Director’s Statement for ‘Watermarks’. 15 Email from John Lawrence to Karen Popp dated February 11, 2009. 16 ‘I PROTEST!’ The Maccabia Games, the Olympic Games and the Jewish Austrian Swimmer, by David Snipper and Gail Shuster-Bouskila for Chazav Junior High English Web Pages, http://www.geocities.com/Athens/pantheon/8127/olyhtml/jdeutsch.html (17.8.2008). ZUR AUTORIN Karen PROPP is the author of two memoirs and the co-editor of a collection of essays. She lives in Boston, Massachusetts. www.karenpropp.com