Tinus Osendarp—Medal Winning Olympian and Nazi Collaborator

Without a shadow of a doubt, the star of the 1936 Olympic Games was Jesse Owens. But there was another medal winner who became more infamous than famous. He came 3rd behind in the Men’s 100 metres sprint behind Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe and third place in the Men’s 200 metres sprint behind Jesse Owens and Mack Robinson. The name of this double bronze medal winner is Tinus Osendarp.

In the 100 m final, Tinus Osendarp ran 10.5 s just behind the American Jesse Owens’ 10.3 s and Ralph Metcalfe’s 10.4 s. During the medal ceremony Osendarp raised his arm in the Nazi salute. Upon his return home, Osendarp was called “the best white sprinter” by the Dutch press.

Tinus (Martinus) Osendarp was born on 21 May 1916 in Delft, the son of Bernardus Osendarp, owner of a fruit and vegetable export company. The Osendarp family moved to Rijswijk when the VUC football association was flourishing there, with a small athletics department. However, Tinus wanted to become a famous footballer above all else. With his innate speed, he ascribed to a great future on the football field.

Tinus Osendarp started sprinting for fun, and one day a talent scout discovered him. His first success came in 1934, when he placed third in the 200 m at the inaugural European Championships, won by compatriot Chris Berger. Osendarp finished fifth in the 100 metres and won a second bronze medal in the 4×100 metres relay (with Tjeerd Boersma, Chris Berger, and the non-Olympian Robert Jansen).

He increased his popularity by winning the 100 m and the 200 m at the 1938 European Championships in Paris.

He first came under the influence of SS propaganda in Berlin. That became the foundation for his future involvement in National Socialism.

Working as a policeman in The Hague, Osendarp joined the NSB (the Dutch National Socialist Party) in 1941 and the SS in 1943. Working for the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), he was involved with the arrests of various resistance fighters and helping with the deportation of Dutch Jews. The payment for each captured Jewish man or woman was 7.50 Dutch Guilders, [the equivalent of $50 or €42 today]. Many he arrested/betrayed the Nazis murdered.

In 1948, Osendarp’s sentence was 12 years in prison. Instead, he was allowed to carry out his sentence by working in the coal mines in the Southeast of the Netherlands to support his family.

Convicted Nazis on the way back to the camps they stayed in after working in the Maurits Coal mine, (The photo is the street where I grew up.)

Osendarp was released in early 1953 and moved to Limburg to work in the mines. In 1958, he became an athletics coach at Kimbria in Maastricht, and then from 1972 on, he was a coach at Achilles-Top in Kerkrade. He died in 2002 at the age of 86 in Heerlen. Although he was a relatively minor perpetrator—I think the sentence was too lenient. I would have sentenced him to life in prison with no chance of parole.

sources

http://www.olympedia.org/athletes/73863

https://ww2gravestone.com/martinus-tinus-bernardus-osendarp-dutch-1936-top-athlete-and-collaborator/

https://web.archive.org/web/20200417093957/https://www.sports-reference.com/olympics/summer/1936/ATH/mens-100-metres.html

https://hyperleap.com/topic/Tinus_Osendarp

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2 Comments

  1. historiebuff says:

    Death would have been an appropriate sentence for him.

    Like

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