Alfred Nakache: The Swimmer - & Survivor - of Auschwitz
Here's a story that transcends sport; it's one of inhumanity & tragedy on a scale most of us cannot fathom and none of us would ever wish to live through - or see out loved one perish by. Our SOS Hall of Fame tribute on the 85th anniversary of his 2:36.8 WR in the 200m breaststroke in Marseille
Alfred Nakache was said to “walk like Charlie Chaplin and laugh like Henri Salvador”. Nakache raced in front of Hitler at the 1936 Games, broke the world 200m breaststroke record in 1941 but in 1943 was arrested by the Gestapo as a Jew and taken to the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Born in Constantine, Algeria, on November 18, 1915, Nakache became known as the “Swimmer of Auschwitz”. His wife and 2-year-old daughter Annie died in a gas chamber there.
Nakache managed to swim while at Auschwitz; in the camp water tanks. After surviving the camp, Nakache raced at the 1948 Games: no longer the man he once was, he was eliminated in the semis.
In June 2020. the new Alfred-Nakache Pool was due to open in Sauvian, but the Covid pandemic caused a slight delay: the challenges of that time pale by comparison to those faced by Nakache.
The Algerian with French citizenship he would be stripped of during the Nazi occupation of France, would be the first to advocate patience, a time of healing and renewal, an acceptance that the long game is sometimes the only game that matters if the game is to go on at all.
Nakache raced for the TOEC Dauphins swim club in Toulouse that today is known for many more swimmers, including the four-times French Olympic champion Léon Marchand. Back in 1941, the horrors that were to unfold bled red threads to sport, the story of one of Nakache's domestic rivals a torrid tale of collaboration:
Craig Lord
Among the many references to Nakache down the years, here are two standouts on video, the first 50-minute documentary of his life – Alfred Nakache, the Swimmer of Auschwitz, 2001 – featuring the splendid journalist Eric Lahmy, whose words graced the pages of L’Equipe for many a long year.
The second is the video made to mark Nakache’s International Swimming Hall of Fame induction, complete with the contributions of the French delegation that made the trip to Fort Lauderdale in 2019 to celebrate the life of a man second to none when it came to overcoming crushing experience Nakache somehow managed to find a way through, a way of going on, a way of celebrating life and striving for the best you can be in the midst of monstrous circumstances fit to destroy the soul.
The Documentary:
The ISHOF Induction
Laure Manaudou and her former boyfriend Fred Bousquet, French swimmers who have a daughter together, were to have starred in a film of Nakache’s story. The news was revealed in 2009 by L’Equipe, with Jean Bodon, a professor at the University of Alabama, the brain behind the production. The project did not proceed, in part due to a lack of funding, according to the French sports newspaper.
A water polo player as well as swimmer, Nakache was posthumously inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame as a member of the Class of 2019 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, May 18, 2019.
The fuller story of Alfred 'Artem' Nakache follows for our SOS Hall of Fame.
