Alfred Flatow

Alfred Flatow (3 October 1869 to 28 December 1942) was a Jewish German gymnast who competed at the 1896 Summer Olympics in Athens. There he won the parallel bars, finished second on the horizontal bar and was a member of the German team that took gold in both the parallel bars and the horizontal bar team events; he also entered the vault, pommel horse and rings. After the Games the Deutsche Turnerschaft, then the governing body of German gymnastics, boycotted the Olympics as unGerman and most German gymnasts were suspended. A gymnastics teacher since 1890, Flatow co-founded the Judische Turnerschaft in 1903 and wrote books about his sport. Forced out of his club in 1933 and expelled from German gymnastics by the Nazis in 1936, he emigrated to the Netherlands in 1938, was deported to Theresienstadt in 1942 and died there of starvation.