Fred
Oberlander’s
reach extends beyond two continents and four countries.
As a wrestler, between 1930 and
1950, he won two Austrian Junior titles,
five French Heavyweight Championships,
seven British Heavyweight
Championships, and the 1950 Canadian
Heavyweight crown.
He also won the 1935 World Exhibition
Championship in Brussels,
the 1937 Moulin Rouge International
Championship, the Allied Championships
of 1944, and the Commonwealth
Games title in
1948, in addition to
several silver and
bronze achievements
along the way.
Oberlander was nominated to represent
Austria at the
1936 Olympic Games
in Berlin, but he
writes, “For obvious
reasons, being Jewish,
I refused.” At the
1935 World Championships,
Oberlander
was listed as “stateless.”
His first match in
that competition was
against the German
champion Kurt Siebert.
Recalls Oberlander, “The German
coach objected to
the Hakoah [of
Vienna] emblem on
my wrestling attire,
claiming that it was a political insignia. I answered that
it was
my club’s emblem, which it was. Finally,
the referee decided that the Swastika on
Siebert’s jersey was also a political insignia.
On that note, the match began—and finished in my favour.”
After representing Great Britain in
the 1948 Olympic Games (he was team
captain at the age of 37), Oberlander
emigrated to Canada, where he founded
the Canadian Maccabi Association.
In 1953, he captured the Maccabiah
Games Heavyweight Wrestling Championship
and was named Outstanding
Jewish World Athlete. The award was
presented to him by Israel’s first Prime
Minister David Ben-Gurion.
An entire floor in the Pierre Gildesgame
(Maccabi) Sport Museum in Ramat
Gan, Israel, is named in honor of
Fred Oberlander.
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