Jesse Owens - World Civ at DHS with Mrs. Thomsen



Jesse Owens

Jesse Owens, the son of a sharecropper and grandson of a slave, achieved what no Olympian before him had accomplished. His stunning achievement of four gold medals at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin has made him the best remembered athlete in Olympic history.

His promising athletic career began in 1928 in Cleveland, Ohio where he set Junior High School records by clearing 6 feet in the high jump, and leaping 22 feet 11 3/4 inches in the broad jump. Jesse gave the world a preview of things to come in Berlin, while at the Big Ten Championships in Ann Arbor on May 25, 1935, he set three world records and tied a fourth, all in a span of about 45 minutes. At the Big Ten Championships Jesse accomplished what many experts still feel is the greatest athletic feat in history...setting 3 world records and tying a fourth in four grueling track and field events.

In the 1936 Berlin Olympics he became the first American track & field athlete to win four gold medals in a single Olympiad. This remarkable achievement stood unequaled until the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, when American Carl Lewis matched Jesse's feat.

Jesse Owens proved in Berlin and thereafter that he was a dreamer who could make the dreams of others come true, a speaker who could make the world listen and a man who held out hope to millions of young people. Throughout his life, he worked with youths, sharing of himself and the little material wealth that he had. In this way, Jesse Owens was equally the champion on the playground of the poorest neighborhoods as he was on the oval of the Olympic Games.

President Carter said it best when he stated: "Perhaps no athlete better symbolized the human struggle against tyranny, poverty and racial bigotry. His personal triumphs as a world-class athlete and record holder were the prelude to a career devoted to helping others. His work with young athletes, as an unofficial ambassador overseas, and a spokesman for freedom are a rich legacy to his fellow Americans."



Jesse Owens

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Albert Einstein

“If my theory of relativity is proven successful, Germany will claim me as a German and France will declare that I am a citizen of the world. Should my theory prove untrue, France will say that I am a German and Germany will declare that I am a Jew.”

Albert Einstein’s political activism began during World War I. After the war, he participated in the League of Nations (the predecessor to the United Nations) and in other disarmament groups. He soon became a leader and advocate for pacifism and non-violent conflict resolution. In 1933, Einstein decided to emigrate to the United States due to the rise to power of the Nazis under Germany's new chancellor, Adolf Hitler. While visiting American universities in April, 1933, he learned that the new German government had passed a law barring Jews from holding any official positions, including teaching at universities. A month later, the Nazi book burnings occurred, with Einstein's works being among those burnt, and Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels proclaimed, "Jewish intellectualism is dead." Einstein also learned that his name was on a list of assassination targets, with a "$5,000 bounty on his head". One German magazine included him in a list of enemies of the German regime with the phrase, "not yet hanged".

Einstein was undertaking his third two-month visiting professorship at the California Institute of Technology when Hitler came to power in Germany. On his return to Europe in March 1933 he resided in Belgium for some months, before temporarily moving to England. He took up a position at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, New Jersey, an affiliation that lasted until his death in 1955.

Other scientists also fled to America. Among them were Nobel laureates and professors of theoretical physics. With so many other Jewish scientists now forced by circumstances to live in America, often working side by side, Einstein wrote to a friend, "For me the most beautiful thing is to be in contact with a few fine Jews—a few millennia of a civilized past do mean something after all." In another letter he writes, "In my whole life I have never felt so Jewish as now."

With the onset World War II in 1939, Europe was further destabilized and Einstein feared that the Nazi regime would be victorious. At the urging of fellow scientist Leo Szilard , Einstein wrote a letter to US President Roosevelt warning that the US must develop the atomic bomb before the Germans did. As a result, President Roosevelt initiated a research project to create an atomic bomb, and the Nuclear Age was set in motion. However, as the realization of nuclear weapons drew near, Einstein looked beyond World War II to future problems that such weapons could bring. In December 1944, Einstein wrote to physicist Niels Bohr, “When the war is over, then there will be in all countries a pursuit of secret war preparations with technological means which will lead inevitably to preventative wars and to destruction even more terrible than the present destruction of life.”

While Einstein’s recommendation led to the Manhattan Project, after the devastation of Japan by the atomic bomb – which occurred three months after the surrender of Germany – Einstein deeply regretted his role in encouraging the project. In November 1954, five months before his death, Einstein summarized his feelings about his role in the creation of the atomic bomb: “I made one great mistake in my life... when I signed the letter to President Roosevelt recommending that atom bombs be made; but there was some justification - the danger that the Germans would make them.”







Albert Einstein

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Alan Turing

The man who broke the "unbreakable" code was at home in his world of figures and computations, but seldom elsewhere.

Peculiar practices clung to Alan Turing like layers of moor fog. To his Bletchley Park colleagues, he was "the Prof," often seen distractedly hurrying to or from the mansion and Hut 8, the section struggling to break the secret German U-boat code. To his neighbors in Shenley village, he was the odd one on the bicycle wearing a gas mask, the best thing for relief of chronic allergies, he believed.

Turing had few friends, stammering speech, and unrefined manners. To say that he was merely "unkempt" was like saying that ‘Shakespeare was only "talented." Mrs. Turing regularly wrote her son reminders to purchase items of basic apparel. "Buy at least one suit a year," she cautioned. He held up his trousers with string and often wore a pajama top under his sport coat. Turing was a homosexual and dealt with many persecutions throughout his life. In 1952 he was prosecuted for criminal acts (in the United Kingdom homosexual acts/lifestyles were considered illegal). He chose chemical castration (treatment with female hormones) in lieu of prison. He wrote to a friend, “"It is supposed to reduce sexual urges whilst it goes on, but one is supposed to return to normal when it is over. I hope they’re right." Sadly, he died in 1954, several weeks before his 42nd birthday, from cyanide poisoning. An inquest determined it was suicide; his mother and some others believed his death was accidental.

He was iconoclastic contradictory, and eminently mysterious. Few would know of his achievements during his lifetime, but in the last years of the 20th century, the fundamental logic of his "Universal Turing Machine" – central to the science of computing – would finally confer on Turing the long-delayed recognition as "intellectual father" of the modern computer.

During WWII the German military transmitted thousands of Enigma-coded messages every day. At least 100,000 of the chunky, portable typewriter-like machines had been manufactured by 1942. Every ship, U-boat, air base, and every unit in the German armed forces possessed at least one of the devilish devices, but with Turing’s arrival at Bletchley, the Ultra code-breakers had an immediate advantage: During the initial critical assault on the Enigma variations, Alan Turing was the only mathematician at Bletchley.

Assisted by Gordon Welchman, Alan used existing mathematical principles to devise a mechanized approach to seeking out the "probable words" common to all secret messages. The Bletchley Park "bombes"  (noisy, crude, but effective electro-mechanical code-breaking machines) - went from decoding a trickle of 50 Enigma messages a week in 1940 to 3,000 per day in 1943. After WWII he continued to work on computer research development and began work on an early version of an electronic computer.







Alan Turing

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Margaret Lambert (born as: Gretel Bergmann)

In the early 1930s, Bergmann was one of Germany's top female track and field athletes and seemed poised to compete at the 1936 Olympics, which were going to be held in Berlin. In 1936, Bergmann tied the German women's high jump record (5'3") less than one month before the start of the Berlin Olympics. Despite the fact that the height would have won her the gold or silver medal at the Olympics, she was forced off the German team because she was Jewish. Recalling this racism in 2004 (The New York Times, July 7, 2004), she expressed her angry regret by remarking, "A hundred thousand spectators seeing a Jew win would've been heaven." After the Nazis' rise to power, Bergmann and other Jewish athletes were told they were no longer allowed to compete in German athletic clubs or competitions. In response, Bergmann moved to London and hoped to represent Great Britain at the Olympics. She won the British high jump championship in 1935.

Before the Berlin Olympics an Olympic boycott movement was gaining momentum in the United States because of the Nazi policy of excluding Jewish athletes. Hitler and the Nazi’s wanted to keep up a good façade for the world, so in response, the Nazis agreed to nominate 21 Jews, including Bergmann, to attend the Olympic training camp. She returned to Germany and took part in the camp, because her family (who remained in Germany) had been threatened if she did not return. She outperformed all of the other athletes but later received a letter telling her that she would not be allowed to compete because she was Jewish. Bergmann recalls that "the thought that I might represent Nazi Germany had sickened me, and yet I desperately wanted the chance to compete...but my motivation was different from...any other athlete...I wanted to show what a Jew could do, and I wanted to use my talent as a weapon against Nazi ideology." Bergmann later remarked that "It was all a charade. They never intended to put me on the team." Feeling cheated, she emigrated to the United States in 1937, and promptly won national championships in the high jump and shot put. She repeated as national champion in the high jump in 1938. 

Bergmann had vowed never to have anything to do with Germany. But in 1996, she was invited by the German Olympic Committee to be its guest at the Atlanta Olympics. She turned it down at first, but the committee prevailed. "I decided that I could not blame this generation for what their fathers and grandfathers did," she told Ira Berkow. "I mean, if my father killed somebody, I should not be held responsible."







Margaret Lambert (born as: Gretel Bergmann)

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Name: _________________________________ Period: ___________

Lives that disproved Nazi theories

|What are some of the qualities of this |What were the accomplishments of this person? |How did the accomplishments/lifestyle of this person |

|person’s lifestyle, ethnicity, etc. that |and/or |challenge Hitler’s Nazi Racist Ideology? |

|were “controversial” during WWII? |What positive things did they do or contribute to the | |

| |world? | |

|Jesse Owens | | |

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|Albert Einstein | | |

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|Margaret Lambert | | |

|Alan Turing | | |

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Short Essay Response: On a separate sheet of paper, please answer ONE of the following questions. Complete for HW and turn in on Tuesday 5/1/12. Chart and essay are worth 50 points total. +5 EC points if essay is typed!

1. If you were living in Germany during the Holocaust where/who would you be? (Nazi supporter? Jewish? Helping Jews? Escaping? Persecuted because of your lifestyle?). In one paragraph explain the realities of your life based on your current background, ethnicity, life choices, religion, etc. AND in one paragraph explain what you hope your life could have looked like. Include a brief introduction and conclusion.

a. Example 1: if you are Jewish you can assume you might have been persecuted, but in the next paragraph you could explain how you “hope” you would have held on to your faith, or fought for your family, etc.)

b. Example 2: if you are not Jewish and not European think about your religion or lifestyle choices. Would you have been accepted in Nazi Germany or persecuted?

2. After analyzing the four people’s lives and successes who defied the Nazi Ideology use at least 2 of these stories to compare with the modern day. Compare and contrast how certain groups (or particular individuals) are mistreated today in similar ways (ie: people considered “enemies” by their government, people mistreated because of their race or religion, etc.) Make sure to include examples from 2 of the above stories AND specific people and/or facts and examples from today. Include a brief introduction and conclusion.

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