90-year-old Olympian escaped Nazi Germany

By Mike Bush

KSDK -- No matter how old you get, what really matters is the age of your heart.  Later this month, Erich Dahl will turn 90.

"He's been a real inspiration for lots of people," says Nancy Weigley, one of his biggest supporters.

Dahl gives new meaning to the term, "senior moment."  To him, it's a workout everday at the Jewish Community Center in Creve Coeur.

"I am not a person who sits there and watches a football game and gets excited," says Dahl. "I'd rather do it myself, you know."

He does it to stay healthy and to be ready for the competition.
Erich Dahl is one of the most decorated athletes in the history of the Senior Olympics. He has hundreds of medals.

"People don't believe it but they don't just hand them to you," he says with a laugh.

But Dahl wasn't born to run. He was forced to.

His life began as the only Jewish boy in the small town of Achen, Germany, just as Adolph Hitler was coming to power.

"From almost one day to the next, I lost all my friends. They couldn't talk to me, even if they wanted to," he recalls. "And the parents who knew your parents for years already, now when they saw them, they looked the other way. They were afraid some neighbor might report them."

At age 18, Dahl and his two sisters fled Germany to start a new life in the United States at the urging of his relatives.

Dahl's father who was wounded in World War I and his mother, along with aunts, uncles, cousins and nearly the entire Dahl family were rounded up by the Nazis and taken to Concentration Camps.

"These were honest people who in time of war fought for their country," explains Dahl.

When he got to the US, he joined the Army because he wanted to help defeat Hitler.

"I was hoping I would be sent over there but I ended up in the Pacific," he says.

It wasn't until after the war that Dahl learned the fate his large family. With only a couple of exceptions, they'd all been killed.

"They hadn't harmed anybody," he says with emotion. "And why did they get murdered?  Only because they were Jewish. There was no reason. It's been 70 years now it's still hard to..., " he trails off and can't continue.

Just steps from where he works out everyday is the St. Louis Holocaust Museum and Learning Center where they remember not to forget.

"I think it's important for people who don't know what went on," says Dahl.

It's especially important these days he says, when people like the president of Iran insist that the Holocaust never happened.

"He said the whole thing was a hoax. The whole thing never happened. Where did they go?," asks Dahl. "I left over there in November '38, they were still all living. I get out of the Army in '45, there's nobody left. Not one came back. Not one."

Dahl emerged from those dark shadows to build a life here in St. Louis. He recently lost his wife of 55 years, but he's very proud of his two children, five grandchildren and now one great grandchild.

"You just realize how much he's overcome and yet he's got a smile on his face everyday," says Weigley, who is also the Chairperson of the St. Louis Senior Olympics.

He may be moving up an age group but has no plans on backing down at this years Senior Olympics in May.

"One thing I know, I can't stop. If I stop, I'm done," says Dahl.

Sometimes people make history. Other times, history makes people.

"You have to make a decision," he explains. "Either you're going to let it get the best of you or you keep going.  One man who is able to keep the past where it belongs. Behind him."

To Register for this year's Senior Olympics go to http://www.stlouisseniorolympics.org/