With a roster of promising athletes, Vienna’s 115-year-old Hakoah Sports Club has found new life

For more than six decades, Simon Panzer has come to swim meets across Austria wearing a Star of David on his chest.

The symbol represents two aspects of Panzer’s identity: his Judaism, and his membership in Hakoah Sports Club, which was founded by Jews in the Austrian capital in 1909.

The club, like others across Europe, fields both amateur and professional sports teams across a range of age groups and acts as a social hub for its members. Today, it is a source of pride for the city’s 14,000 Jewish residents, with a legacy that Panzer calls “absolutely impressive.”

But nowadays, he and other members feel a range of emotions about the club’s longtime symbol.

Panzer says he is proud of the Star of David, “but at the same time also scared, in particular since the Gaza war.” He has stopped wearing it outside swim meets. Club president Thomas Loewy, meanwhile, remembers a time when the star was “very stigmatized” and said, “I wear the Star of David proudly as part of our club.”

And for Hakoah member Anna Dragolava, the dilemma is especially layered — because she isn’t Jewish.

“I did wonder if it was appropriate for me as a non-Jew to wear this symbol,” she said, “but I intend to represent it with the respect it deserves.”

The varying perspectives on the symbol are one way in which Hakoah, Hebrew for “the strength,” represents the rebirth of Vienna’s Jewish community — and how its place in the city is changing. Reconstituted following the Holocaust, the club has seen a run of success in recent years.

Its mandate has transformed since its founding years: Created as a space for Jewish athletes who were excluded from other clubs, it now welcomes members of all backgrounds, most of whom aren’t Jewish, and promotes inclusion and diversity.

“Although we see ourselves as a contact for the Jewish community in sporting matters, we do not keep statistics on how many members are Jewish or not,” Loewy said. “Everyone is warmly welcome here. My goal as president is to further expand Hakoah as a platform for exchange and understanding.”

The club is now mostly known for its swimmers. Standout athletes include Aviva Hollinsky, 16 — a member of Austria’s junior national swim team, who won last year’s 400m individual medley at the Austrian national championships — as well as her brother Gideon, one of Austria’s top backstrokers. Their mother, Simone Hollinsky, swam briefly with Hakoah in the late 1980s.

Loewy, 58, likewise, won silver in the 100m freestyle and gold in the 50m fly at the European Masters Championships held in Belgrade this past summer, setting Austrian age-group records in both.

Hakoah’s junior swim team secured first place at the Austrian Junior Outdoor Championships this year, and both the junior and youth teams have placed among the top teams in Austria at both indoor and outdoor individual and team championships. Hakoah’s masters, or 18-and-over, team won the Austrian championship in 2021 and 2023, and came in third in 2022.

Its return to prestige has been unlikely. At the time of the club’s founding, roughly 200,000 Jews lived in Vienna, which was then led by Mayor Karl Lueger, whose antisemitism is sometimes described as a precursor to Adolf Hitler. By the 1920s, it had 5,000 members, making it the country’s largest athletic club, and its soccer team had attained international fame, at one point winning the country’s national championship. Its renown was such that in 1929 some former players who had relocated to the United States adopted the team’s name without permission — leading to threats from the Vienna club.

In 1936, three of its star swimmers — Judith Deutsch, Ruth Langer and Lucie Goldner — famously boycotted the Berlin Olympics, protesting Hitler’s rise to power. When the Nazis annexed Austria two years later, they shuttered Hakoah, seizing assets that included nearly eight acres of land with a stadium, athletic facilities and a clubhouse.

After the war, a tiny group of Jews who had somehow either survived in the city or returned began to revive Hakoah. For Loewy, that legacy is personal: His father, dentist Herbert Loewy, had survived the Holocaust as a so-called “U-boat,” hidden “underground” by his Catholic grandparents in Vienna.

“My father breathed life back into Hakoah with his friends after the war,” Loewy said. “Only a few had the strength and will to rebuild the club after the Holocaust.”

Loewy said the club was left with “a completely dilapidated Sports Club Hakoah hut in the mountains near Vienna.” But he added, “For my father and other returnees, it was a place to catch up on lost youth and revive club life.”

In 2002, Hakoah recovered land near its original site in Vienna’s Prater Park as part of a reparation settlement, helping expand it. Its new center, completed in March 2008, includes a three-section multipurpose sports and event hall, fitness center with wellness area, outdoor tennis courts, beach volleyball, and a small pool.

A punny poster outside the club reflects its new approach: “You don’t have to be Jewish to be fit,” it says. Today, its 800 members, 500 of whom train competitively across a range of sports, reflect Vienna’s broad mix of cultures and backgrounds.

“Hakoah swimmers come from nearly all continents and from all major religions, said Erich Hille, president of the swim section. “Like many sports clubs, we make an important contribution to integration, mutual understanding and tolerance.”

Its Jewish history still holds significance to some members who cherish past family connections or take pride in their Jewish identity. Masters swimmer Robert Beig’s uncle, Otto “Schloime” Fischer, played on the soccer team from 1926 to 1930. Panzer’s father was a member of the Hakoah wrestling team before the war. Panzer, born in Israel, has been a member of Hakoah since he was 8, when his family moved back to Vienna.

“As a not religious person, being a member of a Jewish sport club is a good way to demonstrate my identity,” said Anita Weichberger, a psychotherapist who grew up in Hungary.

Other masters swimmers are drawn to the club primarily for its welcoming atmosphere and the opportunity to compete.

“As a non-Jewish person, the club’s Jewish identity wasn’t a deciding factor for me to join,” said Dragolovova, who recently joined after moving to Vienna from the Czech Republic. “What mattered most was the positive atmosphere and the chance to swim.”

Long-distance swimmer Norbert Nagl, who holds two of Hakoah’s age-group records, contended, “Religion and politics should have nothing to do with sports.”

While the club has changed since it was founded more than a century ago, it still acts as a center of community and social life for its members, even if they look different than they once did.

“Hakoah is more than just a place to swim,” said Ruth Pataki, a swimmer who heads the club’s Masters Section. “It’s defined by its history, team spirit, and the community of swimmers from different nationalities and religions.”