Before Léon Marchand, long before, there was Alfred. Today, few remember Alfred Nakache and his current celebrity is light years away from that of Léon Marchand, the boy with the four gold medals and the idol of the French in Paris 2024. But, between swimming events and while at times he let himself be carried away by the lion maniathe pedestrian has devoured The swimmerPierre Assouline’s book on Nakache. And there are sentences that seem to have been written with Marchand in mind.
For example: “Swimming, dancing. Swimming is not an effort, but a choreography.” And a few lines later: “He smiles before diving in, he smiles when he comes out of the water.”
This is the story of another French swimming idol. His life spanned the 20th century, or was crossed by this century, its crimes and its tragedies. Unjustly forgotten for a long time, Alfred Nakache (1915-1983) was a star in France and Europe. His honours, to start with: 15 times French champion, world university champion, North African champion, silver medalist at the Maccabiah Games, two-time world record holder.
His story could be told like this, but the list of winners explains little, if anything. The most important thing is missing, which Assouline tells us today in a Parisian café: “He is the only high-level athlete in the world who was selected for two Olympic Games, Berlin 1936 and London 1948, and who, in addition, was deported between the two games to Auschwitz and Buchenwald.”
Nakache reached the top, went down to hell and then found the strength to live on. He was a Jew from French Algeria who triumphed in the metropolis. In Berlin in 1936, Hitler’s Olympic Games, he came fourth in the relay race, ahead of the Germans. When the Germans occupied half of France in 1940, he left Paris for Toulouse, where he felt safer. He took part in the Resistance while still competing. Someone denounced him, probably another swimmer, Jacques Cartonnet, a member of the pro-Nazi French militia. Alfred, his wife Paule and their two-year-old daughter Annie were arrested at the end of 1943 and deported to Auschwitz. At the entrance to the camp, Alfred had to separate from Paule and Annie. He never saw them again.
Alfred weighed 85 kilograms when he was deported and had weighed 45 before he was released. The extraordinary thing is that, three years later, he managed to take part in the London Games. He did not win any medals, and that did not matter. Assouline, who was born in Morocco and grew up idolising athletes such as Nakache, writes: “He does not stand on the podium, but there is nothing like a fallen god about him. His presence is enough. He did not fight against the clock but against the barbarity that did not manage to defeat him. This is his victory and no one can take it away from him.”
Alfred, Léon: their heroic and tragic life and this promising and happy life have nothing in common. And yet… “There are things in common,” explains the writer in the café. “First, Toulouse, Alfred’s adopted city and Léon’s birthplace. “The second point: the Dauphins du TOEC.” This is the name of the historic Toulouse club to which Alfred and, decades later, Léon belonged. “What makes the difference between champions,” he continues, “is the human factor. People like Alfred Nakache, the judoka Teddy Riner are good guys. Léon is exceptional: he reminds me of Tintin.”
Léon still has a whole life ahead of him. Alfred, after Auschwitz, London, and a second life as a gym teacher, suffered a heart attack while swimming in the Mediterranean just a few metres from the Spanish border. He loved listening to the record player. The emigrant of Juanito Valderrama and there was sadness on his face but it was a “luminous sadness”. He was 67 years old.
“The story of his existence,” writes Assouline, “could be summed up in one sentence: he was born, he swam, he died.”
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