MONTREAL — Almost 70 years after his great-grandparents fled Nazi Germany, 14-year-old Montrealer Jacob Fraenkel will return to that country this summer to play soccer in the European Maccabi Games – for Germany.
Canadian-born Fraenkel, who was selected last June by the Maccabi Munich team, has German citizenship through his father, Sharon Fraenkel, who was born in Israel to German parents. They returned to Germany – to Munich – when the elder Fraenkel was a child.
Sharon, who has lived in Montreal since 1997, retains his German nationality. His mother and younger brother still live in Munich.
“I’m tremendously proud, it’s very hard to put it into words,” said the father, who emphasized this was Jacob’s choice. “It’s like things have come full circle.”
Jacob’s grandparents are also ecstatic.
Jacob says being able to play for Germany in the Jewish games makes him proud, too. “That is who I am,” he said. “That is my heritage.” Besides, he points out, soccer in Germany is “light-years ahead of that in Canada.”
The quadrennial regional Maccabi games, to be held in Berlin from July 27 to Aug. 5, are the first-ever on German soil. One of the venues is the Olympic Park, site of the controversial 1936 games. These games have additional significance because it is 70 years since the end of World War II, and the 50th year of diplomatic relations between Germany and Israel and the re-establishment of Maccabi Germany.
Jacob is the only dual citizen on the German U16 Maccabi soccer team and, to his knowledge, on any of the German teams. “Half the players on his team are the sons of people I grew up with in Germany. We all belonged to the same Zionist youth organization and went to its camp,” said Sharon.
Over 2,500 athletes, coaches and other officials are slated to attend from 30 countries. Because of the exceptional nature of these games, non-European countries were invited: Israel, the United States and Canada are among those sending athletes, although there is no Canadian soccer team.
Jacob, a Dollard des Ormeaux resident who attends John Rennie High School’s Sports-études program, has been playing soccer since he was 4. He was an outstanding goalkeeper for the Club de Soccer Mont-Royal-Outremont league last year. Currently between seasons, he is being courted by two teams in the Quebec premier league for his age group.
His sights, however, are set on playing professionally in Europe, preferably Germany. He hopes scouts at the Maccabi Games notice him.
He will spend the whole summer in Germany to advance that dream. His idol is former German star goalie Oliver Kahn.
Last year, Fraenkel tried out with three professional Munich teams, including the famous Bayern Munich. Europe drafts players as young as 16; Jacob will turn 15 during the Maccabi games.
Sharon’s mother, Ernestine, was born in the displaced persons camp in Vilshofen, Germany, in 1946, to Polish parents who survived in a Siberian labour camp. The Silber family remained in Germany, settling in Munich.
His father, Eli, who now lives in Mahone Bay, N.S., was born in 1944 in Israel, where his newly married parents fled in 1936. Theirs was a dramatic escape: he had been apprehended by the Nazi regime, which suspected he would defect while playing abroad with the national field hockey team as his best friend had while in England. That friend warned him to get out while he could.
His multilingual wife-to-be was a secretary to an SS officer. Through that connection, she pleaded with another SS officer that her boyfriend’s passport be returned and they be allowed to leave for Palestine.
The Nazi higher-ups relented, but only on condition that they report to the German diplomatic mission in Palestine regularly, which they did for a couple of years.
Sharon’s father met his mother in Israel when she was on a visit, they married in 1968 and Sharon was born in 1970. In 1974 the family moved to Germany. Sharon made aliyah in 1995.
He visited Montreal soon after and met his wife-to-be, Jacob’s mother, Moroccan-born Nicole Guigui, here, married and stayed.
Jacob admits his identity often baffles non-Jews his age. “If I say I’m Jewish and German they don’t know how that can be because they think German automatically means Nazi or Jew-hater,” he said.
Jacob gives full credit for his soccer achievements to his coach Rino Angelillo of the Clean Sheet Soccer Academy, with whom he has worked one-on-one over the last year. “I wouldn’t be where I am today without him,” he said.
Meanwhile, Jacob has been maintaining and surpassing the solid grade average required by John Rennie’s sports program.
He has also taught himself German over the past year, with the help of his father and by correspondence with his grandmother, and is today close to fluent. When in Germany he has opted to spell his surname the original way – Fränkel – just like his great-grandparents.