OLYMPIC REPORT / 43 DAYS TO THE GAMES : French Synchronized Swimmers Ordered to Change Holocaust Routine

Sports minister Guy Drut on Wednesday ordered France’s Olympic synchronized swimming team to drop any references to the Holocaust in its controversial routine.

Set to music from Steven Spielberg’s “Schindler’s List,” the routine reenacted the arrival of Jewish women in the death camps, the selection by Nazi doctors and their final march to the gas chambers.

The team had planned to perform the four-minute program at the Summer Games.

In a statement, Drut said he ordered the team to remove any “allusions to the tragedy of the Shoah,” which is the Hebrew word for the events that took the lives of 6 million Jews during the World War II.

“There are subjects where we cannot run the risk of communicating messages which could be misinterpreted,” Drut said.

Wearing black bathing suits, the swimmers were to goose-step in German military style to the side of the pool before plunging in. The music also included chants sung in Jewish ghettos during the war.

“The routine is ridiculous,” said Henri Hajdenberg, head of the Representative Council of French Jewish Organizations. “It’s tactless and in poor taste.”

Earlier this week, the French sports daily L’Equipe condemned the team for confusing entertainment with one of history’s darkest periods.

“France, especially France, should not present a ‘show’ of this kind in Atlanta,” the paper said in an editorial.

About 75,000 Jews, 12,000 of them children, were deported from France to Nazi death camps during World War II. About 2,500 returned.

The team’s technical director defended the program, saying it had “great emotional value.”

The swimmers said they had no intention of offending anyone, but that since synchronized swimming is a sport close to dance, no subject should be taboo.

*

Karolyn Kirby, with the most victories on the women’s beach volleyball professional tour, was eliminated from Olympic consideration when she and partner Lisa Arce, the top-seeded team at the trials at Baltimore, lost for the second time in two days and three matches in the double-elimination format.

Though she wouldn’t place all of the blame for their 15-8 loser’s bracket defeat to the second-seeded team of Liz Masakayan and Angela Rock on Arce’s inexperience, it certainly played a factor. So did the fact that they had played only once together before the trials, at a tournament last week in Texas.

“I took a chance on a rookie, and the roll of the dice didn’t come in,” said Kirby, 35. “Lisa is a great player. I enjoyed the partnership. It is my own fault in not finding a partner in time. I just didn’t know what my situation was until two or three weeks ago.”

Later, Masakayan, after coming back from two knee surgeries in the past year, saw her Olympic dream end when she and Rock lost to fourth-seeded Elaine Roque and Dennie Shupryt-Knoop, 15-12, in the final women’s match of the day.

In men’s trials, Karch Kiraly and Kent Steffes, the top men’s seed, demolished the fifth-seeded team of Scott Ayakatubby and Brian Lewis, 15-2.