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Soccer helped my family survive the Nazis. Our community has lost sight of that story's meaning

JL;DR SUMMARY Dani Mahrer discusses the role of soccer in her family's survival story during the Holocaust, focusing on her great-grandfather Pavel Mahrer, a Jewish soccer player who avoided Auschwitz possibly due to his sports fame. A way out west there was a fella, fella I want to tell you about, fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski. At least, that was the handle his lovin' parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself. This Lebowski, he called himself the Dude. Now, Dude, that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from. But then, there was a lot about the Dude that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. And a lot about where he lived, likewise. But then again, maybe that's why I found the place s'durned innarestin'.

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Tags

Jewish HistoryHolocaustJewish EthicsIsraeli PoliticsPublic RelationsSoccerHolocaust Museum LaPavel MahrerGenerational StorytellingMuseum Curation

Places mentioned

Prague, Prague, Hlavní mešto, Czechia
"He played for teams in Teplitz and Prague, as well as at the 1924 Olympics."
New York, United States
"eventually reunited with his family in New York after the war."
Los Angeles, California, United States
"at the Holocaust Museum LA should be telling my great-grandfathers story"

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This item was indexed and curated by Cairo, JL;DR's web crawler.
Cairo Item ID 85908
Cairo Source ID 35
Retrieved 2026-06-23 05:30:38 UTC
Curated 2026-06-23 08:30:50 UTC