The only Jewish athlete on Germany's 1936 Winter Olympic squad

Rudolph Ball is the forgotten Jewish athlete from the 1936 Winter Olympics.

Ball, better known as Rudi, was the star player, a right-winger, on Germany’s ice hockey team that competed in the Winter Games held in the twin cities of Garmisch-Partenkirchen in the Alps. He was the only Jewish athlete among 80 men and women who skated and skied for Nazi Germany in the competition that was designed to display the country’s Aryan athletic supremacy.

As part of its effort to keep Jews out of many parts of national life, such as the arts and sciences and academia, Nazi Germany barred Jewish athletes fr...