Gerrit Kleerekoper (15 February 1897 – 2 July 1943) was a Jewish-Dutchgymnastics coach. He was married with two children and worked as a diamond cutter.
Many years later Alida van den Bos, one of the gold-winning gymnasts, told in an interview how important Kleerekoper's contribution was:
"The training for the Olympics always took place at indoor gymnasiums even though the Olympics that year took place at an outdoor stadium. A few months prior to the Olympics, Kleerekoper made us only practice outdoors because he said that you never know how the weather will be the day of the Olympics and that we must be prepared for hot weather or any weather. The practice outside was very good, because we noticed that you have a lot more energy outdoors than needed."[2]
Five members of the gold-winning team were Jewish and in 1943 were murdered at Sobibor and Auschwitz by the Nazis during Operation Reinhard.
On 2 July 1943 Gerrit Kleerekoper,[3] along with his wife Kaatje and their fourteen-year-old daughter Elisabeth, were murdered by the Nazis at the Sobibór extermination camp in German-occupied Poland.[4] Their twenty-one-year-old son Leendert was murdered in Auschwitz in July 1944 by exhaustion.[4][5][6]
^Brouwer, Erik (2010). "De Moord op een Gouden Turnploeg". In van Liempt, Ad; Luitzen, Jan (eds.). Sport in de Oorlog (in Dutch). L.J. Veen. p. 54. ISBN978-90-204-1936-8.
Further reading
Brouwer, Erik (2010). "De Moord op een Gouden Turnploeg". In van Liempt, Ad; Luitzen, Jan (eds.). Sport in de Oorlog (in Dutch). L.J. Veen. pp. 29–58. ISBN978-90-204-1936-8.