Danchik, Bernard N., 1915-1938

Bernard N. Danchik was born in 1915 and grew up in Brooklyn, New York. As a young man Danchik, a clerk and member of the Bookkeepers, Stenographers and Accountants Union, joined the German Labor Lyceum gymnastics team and became captain of the Williamsburg Gymnastic Group.

In 1936, Danchik worked with the group Committee for Fair Play in Sports to assemble a team of amateur athletes to send to the People's Olympics in Barcelona, Spain. The People's Olympics were organized by trade union organizations and other political groups to protest the Olympic games to be held in the summer of 1936 in Berlin, Germany, where the Nazi regime had recently passed racially discriminatory laws against Jews and had destroyed all independent trade union organizations. By the time the People's Olympics were set to begin in July, thousands of athletes and supporters from 14 countries had gathered in Barcelona.

Danchik sailed to Spain with a team of eight other American athletes, most sponsored by their trade unions. They arrived in Barcelona on July 15. On July 19, the day the games were to open, the athletes awoke to the sound of gunshots in the Barcelona streets. Rather than competing in their first round of sports events, they became surprise eyewitnesses to the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War.

The American team spent several days holed up in their hotel, venturing out on only a few dangerous forays for provisions and to participate in a parade with other athletes in support of the Loyalists. When the games were officially canceled and athletes began to make their way out of Spain, some 200 remained behind to join workers' militias. The American team arrived back in New York on August 3. Their coach, Alfred "Chick" Chakin, had been so transformed by the experience that he soon returned to Spain to join the International Brigades. He was captured by fascists and executed there in 1938.

All through his journey to the People's Olympics, Danchik kept a journal, and collected mementos, souvenirs and photographs. When he got home, he compiled these into a scrapbook along with letters and news articles about all that he had witnessed.

From the guide to the Bernard N. Danchik Papers, 1936-1937, (Tamiment Library / Wagner Archives)