Barcelona, 1936: Fascist Uprising, People’s Olympics, American Athletes

Bernard Danchik was a natural candidate to represent the United States at the 1936 People’s Olympics, hosted in Barcelona. As a 22-year-old clerk and gymnast from New York City, he had fallen in with the Communist Party’s “Third Period” of extreme sectarianism during the Great Depression.[1] From their point of view, the Party was the…