Czech Children’s Volleyball Team named for Poison Used by Nazis
— Czech Jews protested the naming of a children’s volleyball team after the poison that Nazis used to kill Jews and Roma in gas chambers during the Holocaust.
The team Cyklon B – the Czech-language transliteration for the Zyklon B pesticide that the Nazis used — participated recently in a Prague tournament featuring teams from Czech Republic orphanages.
Fans at the tournament, which was sponsored by the ING Bank Fund of the Tereza Maxová Foundation, shouted “Go Cyklon B,” the Pravo daily reported Thursday.
Tomas Jelinek, a former leader of the Jewish Community in Prague, told the daily that the Cyklon B team from an orphanage in Dolni Pocernice, an eastern suburb of Prague, had also played against a team of Roma players.
The Czech Freedom Fighters Association condemned the choice of name.
“The error involving the name Cyklon B for a children’s sports team is primarily the responsibility of adults and their ignorance, and I would term it stupidity,” Emil Kulfánek, vice chairman of the association, told Pravo.
Jindra Machačová, the president of the fund that organizes the annual tournament, which took place for the fourth time, apologized for the incident.
A director of one of the orphanages that participated in the match said the name had been selected by an athlete from the team, a minor, and was not changed in time.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30
