The Brilliant Ajax, Part Two

Who's a Jew? - That's the Question

'Who is a Jew?', asks the Israeli constitution. The rabbinical laws say that a Jew is a person whose mother was Jewish. According to that definition, Michael van Praag and Sjaak Swart are not Jewish. You might wonder why I am following Swart, who denied to be Jewish in the NIW paper (although he added that he was following the Israel national team).

Who is a Jew? Non-Jewish people often think that a born Jew, who does not believe in God, is no longer a Jew. People would then say: "He's Jewish, officially, but not confessional."

Among Jews, however, it is a well accepted view that you're still Jewish, even though you don't believe in God. Just like you're still a Dutchman if you don't believe in God. Being Jewish is an ethnic identity, just like being a Turk, a German or an Armenian. If Salo Muller would become a Protetstant tomorrow, he would be a Protestant to the Protestants. To the Jews however, he would be a Jew, who - for some strange reason - believes in a Protetstant God. "He's a Jew, but not confessional." A lot of Jews never go the synagogue, but they feel Jewish and are regarded so by other Jews.

Being Jewish has got to do with customs, usages, a certain view on life, both deliberately and unconsciously transferred by parents. Being Jewish is a legacy, definitely in Holland. If your family got slaughtered, you yourself got shaped by that. Even if you didn't know those who got slaughtered. It shaped you, because it shaped your parents.

'He's not a Jew, because his mom's not Jewish.' As if you can say: 'He's not a Dutchman, because his mother was not Dutch.' Every Dutchman with one Jewish parent, is reminded of his Jewish identity by the war. That goes for Sjaak Swart and Michael van Praag and Jos Cohen and the thousands of others who survived the war, for the very reason that they were half-breeds or were married to an non-Jew.

The Holocaust is so decisive that even Danny Muller, the 30-year-old son of Bennie (playing for Cambuur Leeuwarden, non-Jewish according to the rabbinal laws, 25% Jewish according to the ethnic laws) names Leon de Winter's Kaplan as his favorite novel, 'in which I recognize a lot of things from my own life'. Kaplan is about a Jew, who was born after the war, but nevertheless shaped by the Holocaust.

Who is a Jew? A factor that makes things even more complex, is the fact that some Jews deny that they're Jewish. Especially Jews who experienced the war. "I never showed it off", Leo Horn once said. "I am indoctrinated by the fear to be abused and discriminated."

And Sjaak Swart, in the NIW: "They might burn your house down, just like that. I therefore prefer to keep it quiet." Bennie Muller's eyes distend as he hears that Sjaak Swart denies to be Jewish. "Do you know the first name in Sjaak's passport? Few people know this: it's Jesaia. Sometimes I use his real name to nag him: 'Hey, Jesaia.'

Well, then he freaks out. He doesn't want to know. His grandpa was called Levitus, he sold herring. Sjaak's dad went to Jewish school with my mother."

Muller starts telling me about his own favorite book. He has read, re-read and loaned out Erfenis Van Het Verleden ('Inheritance Of The Past') until it fell apart. He had it binded again. I just have to read it, he tells me.

In an 'and then, and then' sort of style he describes every turn in the story. Shortly summarized: the book is about a Polish Jew who emigrates to New York, can't find a job over there because he's Jewish, changes his name in order not to look Jewish, becomes rich and then tries to forget he's Jewish. His son later meets a Jewish girl and starts to discover his Jewish background.

I ask Muller whether that happened to him as well. Is he the son in the novel? "Well...", he starts. At that very moment, three customers walk into the store, Co Prins' brother calls on the phone, Muller's wife starts walking around cholerically - and we decide to meet the week after. As I come back, he does not want to talk about 'Jewish things' anymore.

It's difficult for Swart and Muller. Both were 'Jewed at' a lot on the pitch, especially Swart, who scored a lot of goals and was an irritating player for opponents. The most frequently heard story regarding Muller is the one about his confrontation with DWS goalkeeper Jan Jongbloed, in January, 1965.

According to Van Zanten, this is what happened: Jongbloed and Muller collide, Jongbloed says something and Muller instantly tries to beat Jongbloed up. As referee Piet Römer stops him from doing so, the following discussion arises:

Muller: "Jongbloed called me a 'filthy fucking Jew'! And I didn't do a thing! This happened a number of times. I am not digging this any longer!"

Jongbloed: "Muller hit me and I got mad. So I said 'fuck you'!" DWS player Frits Flinkevleugel claims that Jongbloed did not use the words 'fucking Jew'. After the game, DWS chairman Solleveld invites Muller over to the board's room. Muller refuses: "What sense does it make to shake hands if they do it again next time?"

Ajax decides to lodge a complaint with the Dutch football association (KNVB). Managers of Ajax and DWS meet in Hotel Terminus in Utrecht, on 1 February. The accused and witnesses are being interrogated from 8.00pm to 10.30pm. Jongbloed: "If I had to tell you everything that was yelled at me over the years, your ears would tingle. I think this is an awkward case. A bit exaggerated, so people get a wrong impression of me."

Jongbloed gets suspended for two games. Before his comeback, against Vasa-Györ in the European Cup, he receives a telegram, saying: 'Good luck to you and your buddies. Ben Muller.'

Muller finds it annoying as I start talking about the case. "If I see Jongbloed nowadays, he wants to greet me, but to me the guy is dead.

But is this something exceptional? It's the same everywhere, isn't it? Throughout the centuries. I don't think something will happen within the next ten, twenty years, but you always have to pay attention."

It would be easy to say that Muller is paranoid. But to a lot of Dutchmen, this man in his cigar store is the figure-head of Jewish Holland. If Ajax has to play Hapoel Haifa (1999), Muller is presented on TV to talk about the Jewish aspect of Ajax. Muller stands in front of the people, saying: "I am Jewish." Rabbi Abraham Soetendorp stands in front of the people, saying "I am Jewish", too, but I think most football hooligans don't know who rabbi Abraham Soetendorp is.

Especially since he was a football player, Muller faced the world bare naked. He played in a hostile Dutch football stadium every two weeks, packed with thousands of people, who all could have yelled something nasty. And Muller was a prominent Dutchman: he played 43 games for the Dutch national team during the 1960s. Holland coach Elek Schwartz called him a top notch European player. You could say: Muller shouldn't act so pitiful, people yell 'fucking redhead' as well. But after the Holocaust, Dutch Jews have become a bit touchy.

By the way: in the 1960s, Muller did not know that Elek Schwartz was a Jew. The national coach, who was sometimes called 'The Gipsy' in Holland, has been living in Strasbourg for decades, but as he was in Amsterdam to witness the opening of the ArenA, Muller walked up to him for a short private chat.

"Say, Mr Schwartz, is it true that you're a Jew?" Muller asked. Schwartz said: "Yes, of course I am. But I don't want everyone to know, because you see, there's so much scum walking around on this planet."

Sandy, who made every Jewish boy look taller to himself

(From a Noah benSheah poem about Jewish baseball pitcher, Sandy Koufax)

The Jewish search for Jewish sports heroes (a total of over 250 Olympic medals) is an international phenomenon. To the remaining Jews in De Meer, Sjaak Swart was a Jew. After Johnny Rep had taken over his spot and scored a brilliant goal, which made the whole stadium go wild, Sal van Thijn (father of Ed, Amsterdam mayor in the 1980s and early 1990s) did not stand up from his seat. "I'd rather see Sjaak missing", he said.

The landscape was sort of an empty room for the Dutch Jews who survived the war. That room became a little less empty if you went to De Meer on Sundays, and it felt fully furnitured if you saw Swart and Muller on the pitch. These tough football players proved that Jews were no 'Jewies', who needed the great Dutch to save them from the bad Germans. The searching for Jewish athletes may seem somewhat manic, but it is historically explainable.

In the movie Escape From New York, people keep saying to criminal Snake Plissken (played by Kurt Russell): 'I thought you were dead!' The same, in a way, goes for Salo Muller. The physiotherapist was once a living legend, but seems to be almost forgotten since he left Ajax in 1974. 'The best masseur Ajax could ever wish' (as Dutch sports journalist Nico Scheepmaker once put it) got along very well with almost all football players - and especially with Johan Cruyff.

If you get to meet him, you understand why. Salo Muller - who offers me coffee, water and tepid water - has a bedside manner: he's someone you would want to share your problems with. You feel like consulting him if you distrust a diagnosis of club doctor John Rolink. Muller is an excellent listener. He can describe the dressing rooms of the diamond Ajax in an almost anthropologic way.

After a few years with the club (he arrived in 1959, became 'chief' in 1961), he started to make something out of his Jewish identity. He brought typical Jewish Amsterdam beef sausage with him to European away games. Dick van Dijk, with whom Muller was known as 'dressing room duo' de Neefjes ('The Cousins'), would shout: "You have got your Jewish sausage with you, haven't you? This Catholic sausage of mine is disgusting!"

If the players were nagging Muller once again (never about being Jewish), goalkeeper Heinz Stuy would shout: "Leave the gojim in peace!" 'Gojim' is the Hebrew word for a non-Jew, but the goalkeeper pronounced it with a soft 'g'. "Thanks for helping me, but the word is goj!" Muller would reply. "Oh well, you know what I mean!" said Stuy.

Muller had a special bond with his fellow Jews at Ajax. About Jaap van Praag, he says: "Did you ever notice that Jews married to non-Jews, start to behave differently when they're amongst Jews? Then they suddenly start taking liberties."

If Van Praag picked him up with his car, they had a 'cosy Jewish bond', talking about Jewish affairs: 'seen this? seen that?' If someone else would join them, it was instantly over.

Jewish jokes were told in the dressing room: by Van Praag, by Salo and Bennie Muller, but also by non-Jewish Amsterdammers, like Co Prins. "They were all Amsterdam working class boys", says the masseur, "which was a great environment for Amsterdam Jews, because a lot of Amsterdam Jewish expressions and words were used."

In the Great Ajax, there was not too much tolerance for religion in the first place. If Stuy and the Mühren brothers wanted to pray before their meal, the other players would clock the time : "Hey Heinz! 18 seconds!" Salo Muller says: "I never worked on Yom Kippoer, but that always caused me a lot of problems at Ajax."

In 1968, Ajax told him to travel along to Ajax - FC Nürnberg on Yom Kippoer - if not, he could clear out. But there was another important day for him. "The other guys did not feel very involved in National Memorial Day, 4 May. I did, of course, because my entire family was killed in Auschwitz and Sobibor. If we were in the dressing room on 4 May, I obtained two minutes silence at eight o'clock. But nobody else did. Coach Rinus Michels once said: 'Guys, hush for a while.' But still: a few of them just went to take a leak."

Did the Ajax Jews never talk about the Holocaust? "Bennie and I never talked about it. Neither did Sjakie and I. Sjakie never told me his story. But despite that, I had an excellent relationship with Sjakie."

Were there ever any nasty remarks? "I've been a physiotherapist for almost fourty years. One drunk patient once made an anti-Semite remark, but well, that's what he was drunk for, I assume." And as an Ajax masseur? At ADO, in The Hague, a spectator once shouted 'Filthy fuckin' Jew!' Muller threw his water bag at the crowd and the Ajax board complained to ADO after the game.

"But you know how it goes. That kept happening at ADO in The Hague, at FC Utrecht and at GVAV, in Groningen."

Players Henk and Cees Groot once jumped out of the team bus to maul a GVAV player who had yelled 'fuckin' Jew'. Very annoying, but it was just a single racist. There were never yells from the stands.

So, there was never a remark within the Ajax team? "I do have to tell you this one story." In 1966, as Ajax was in Istanbul for a European Cup game, Salo Muller went to see the club doctor, because he was suffering from a severe stomach-ache. The diagnosis: "You've got a serious smous belly." Muller said: "Huh?" Rolink: "A smous belly.You've all got that, you Jews."

Muller gets angrier and angrier while he's telling the story, he's almost screaming, impossible to interrupt, but eventually I am able to ask him what on earth a smous belly might be. Muller grabs a dictionary from his cupboard, and there it is: smous: 1. Abusive nickname for Jews. Muller accosted Jaap van Praag, asking him: "'Uncle Japie', what's this!" Van Praag's reaction: "Come on... John is a good guy! He's always there for you.

His intentions are not bad. You've just gót a smous belly, Salo. Just like me."

And still, if Salo Muller is ill, his wife tells him he's got a smous belly. But nevertheless, he says: "It chronically irritated me."

The non-Jewish players of the Great Ajax were living in a Jewish environment which had become pretty rare in post-war Holland: most of the club's money-lenders and employees were Jewish, so were the chairman, the masseur, a handful of team mates, journalist Frits Barend, defender Arie Haan's personal manager Donald Speelman - you would almost start to think there were a lot of Jews in Holland.

Max Tailleur, a Jew from the square of Rembrandtplein and an acquaintance of Caransa, performed as Sinterklaas for the Ajax players in 1966, as the team was preparing in Zeist, for the legendary game against Liverpool ("We've only got one wish, Sinterklaas: beating the English").

Performing artist Max van Praag often accompanied the team as well. A female fan of his once rang at the door of his house, with the offer to make love to him. Mrs Van Praag told her: "Well Miss, you're gonna have to wait for a while. He's at Ajax, at the moment."

Ruud Krol, who was from the Nieuwmarkt area and knew Leo and George Horn since his early childhood, says: "I grew up amongst Jews." Swart's father sold souvenirs at De Meer, and grandpa Swart, who sold herring at Dapper Market, travelled along to European Cup games with the team. "I am sleeping tremendously over here!" he told a journalist in the Istanbul Hilton Hotel.

"I want to have a bed like this at home, too." Defender Wim Suurbier was married to a Jewish girl called Verkaart. For approximately ten minutes, that is, because she was having his baby. Salo Muller recalls there were Jews walking around on every Ajax party - they were brought by Ajacieden.

Jewish baker Dave Verdooner wrote in his book Herinneringen ('Memories'), from 1998: 'Several Ajax players from the golden age were customers. Tonnie Pronk did not go abroad without a 'butter cake' of Verdooner's. Johan Cruyff and Piet Keizer regularly dropped by. Johan even told Frits Barend, during an interview, that he was a regular visitor of my bakery on Sundays. I played for OVVO myself, with Sjakie Swart. He was a regular visitor of my shop as well. His dad dropped by every weekend. He was my father's cigar tradesman.

Old Swart would bring us the forms of the football-pool, too.' Michael van Praag would be the referee in Ajax' training games. By doing so, he became friends with Johan Cruyff, who was the same age. In the mid 1960s, they drove to England in a small car - Cruyff's first holiday abroad.

In those days, Jaap van Praag said: "Cruyff just walks upstairs and into my office in my shop on Spui square. He's become quite one of the family, over the years. In my house, too. Last Saturday, he turned up at eleven o'clock at night, with my son and daughter. They brought a friend and a girlfriend over as well. We drank a beer together. I think it was two o'clock in the morning by the time they went home."

"Cruyff was always surrounded by Jews", says Salo Muller. He had a lot in common with people like the Van Praags, Caransa and Salo Muller. Like them, Cruyff was a son of a small tradesman from Amsterdam-East, who died too early. He, too, carried his father with him wherever he went. He, too, was exceptionally determined, probably because of that. Cruyff opened a shoe store on Kinkerstraat, with which he became a small tradesman at a very young age himself.

Besides, he had some real Jewish relatives as well, apart from the Ajax 'family'. His aunt was married to a Jewish diamond seller. About their sons, Cruyff's cousins, Rob Cohen says: "They resemble Johan a little bit. Peaked face, pointed nose." Cruyff's sister-in-law was once married to a real Jew as well. Their son, with whom Cruyff is very close, became an orthodox Jew and moved to Jerusalem. He once won a medal in karate at the 'Maccabiade', the Jewish Olympics.

Cruyff, therefore, has more Jewish relatives than most Jewish Dutchmen. And the story continues: one of Cruyff's daughters started a relationship with Danny Muller, son of Bennie, in the late eighties, who was instantly bought by Barcelona, straight from the Ajax youth. The Cruyffs can't keep their hands off the Jews.

According to his confidential agent Frits Barend, Cruyff is very much interested in Jewish matters, such as the fake kidnapping of Dutch TV personality Jules Croiset and Iraq's attacks on Israël in the Gulf War. After the Barend family recommended it, the Cruyffs started reading a lot of books, for example by Isaac Bashevic Singer.

Sometimes it seems like Cruyff is regarded as some sort of patron saint of the Jews, about whom half of the Dutch Jews can tell a personal story.

Chanan Hertzberger tells that he received a postcard in Hebrew, after his son was born, which was sent by Cruyff's cousin and signed by Cruyff himself. In Los Angeles, as he played for the Aztecs, Cruyff lived at Red Lissauer's place, a Jewish Ajax fan. In Israël, Simon de Winter still likes telling the story about that one day Barcelona came to Israël, to play against Hapoel Beersheva. As Cruyff stepped out of the team bus, De Winter said: "Good evening, Johan!"

"I'll be damned! Are you a Dutchman?" said Cruyff. "Can you show me the dressing rooms?" De Winter did so and received a Barcelona pin for his kindness. "He was really friendly", he'll tell you now, about Cruyff.

The late Joop van Tijn wrote an article in Vrij Nederland magazine in 1997, about the Bar Mitzvah of a boy in the early seventies. The boy's father had played for Ajax, but he played as a central defender for a minor AFC youth team himself. Van Tijn, who was the master of ceremonies on the night, had interviewed Johan Cruyff and recorded it on video, as a present for the kid.

On the video, Cruyff said that he regarded a few well-known professional players as tough opponents, but added that Guy, the little boy from AFC, was the best of them all. He said he had seldomly beaten him.

Van Tijn wrote: "At least I was the master of ceremonies, but what did Cruyff officially have to do with it - except that he apparently thought it was fun to do such a thing? It was not one of the highlights, but the ultimate highlight of the bar mitswa. All the expensive presents rich aunts and uncles had brought from all over the world (the kid's parents were rich) paled before it."

Tamarah Benima, former chief editor of the NIW paper, summarizes: "Cruyff seems very kosher to me." And: "Cruyff lies next to my bed!" Well - not Cruyff in person, but a book with his selected quotes.

Bennie Muller is the only person to be less enthusuastic. A few years ago he invited Cruyff to come to the Maccabiade. "He couldn't make it", sulks Muller, "he has something else to do, or whatever. Johan is now treated as if he's a God or something. Even if he makes a slip of the tongue on television, people add it to the official Dutch dictionary!" No, Bennie Muller prefers Johan's brother Hennie. "If you see him, you really think he's a Jew! He did not go to Jewish schools, but he's always had Jewish friends."

Is there something Jewish to the typical and often parodied 'Johan Cruyff speech'? Jacob van der Wijk, editor of a Dutch-Jewish dictionary, wrote me:

'Closer examination confirmed my initial impressionon this matter. If there's anything remarkable about Cruyff's speech, it would be the almost complete absence of anglo-Yiddish influences. I personally think the most 'Jewish' aspects of the man are - apart from his restless talking and gesticulating - the emphasis he places on the importance of intelligence and the quasi dialectic way in which he thinks and argues: "the goalkeeper determines the speed of the attack". Including, of course, his famous paradoxes and aphorisms, such as: "The Italians can't beat an opponent, but the opponent can lose against them". And he is, of course, the master of the malapropism."

And all of a sudden it was over. At Sjaak Swart's farewell reception in the Hilton Hotel in 1973, some Barcelona officials were among the guests. They came for Cruyff. Salo Muller left one year later, after a quarrel with the board. "The only Jewish chairman Ajax ever had, should never have let his Jewish masseur go like that", he complains.

That 'only Jewish chairman' stepped back in 1978, after a 40 year regime. At his reception, Leo Horn held a speech and Kuki Krol read a poem. The 'Breslauers' disappeared as well. For a short period, Ajax did not even allow Leo Horn to attend the visiting referees, he went bankrupt in 1994, after a quarrel with textile tycoon Gustave Richheimer (owner of Flexitex). He died one year later.

Caransa had begun working with Amsterdam club DWS a lot, and later with FC Amsterdam. On 23 October 1977 he was beaten down in the middle of the night, right in front of the Amstel Hotel, and kidnapped. The news went all over the world and made it to the front page of the New York Post. Kurt Waldheim, general secretary of the United Nations, said: " I condemn deeds like this."

The kidnappers let Caransa go on 2 November, after a ten million guilder ransom was paid, about which Caransa had negotiated himself. According to the police, the kidnappers had demanded new thousand guilder banknotes of certain serial numbers. In the following months, the so-called 'Caransa banknotes' were found popped up everywhere: in Rome, in Los Angeles, in a Chinese gambling house in Amsterdam and even in Argentina, after Holland had played for the World Cup over there.

Caransa has been living a withdrawn life for the last twenty years. Now the big multinationals have finally found their way into the game of football, he has called it quits. Bennie Muller sometimes sees him play a game of bridge, at his bridge club in Vinkeveen. Muller and Swart still have a chat almost daily and sometimes they kick some ball together.

Swart tells me, laughing out loud, about an unfriendly indoor match, in which Muller played against some Johnny Schaap. "You might know him, too", says Swart, "his dad's a tennis instructor." Again, we looked one another in the eyes, significantly: Schaap means 'sheep' and, like so many Dutchmen with animal names, Schaap is a Jewish name as well. Swart and I did not get further than that sort of hints.

Most of the 'Breslauers' are dead. In Leon de Winter's novel Supertex, Simon Breslauer drowns inside his Mercedes 560 SEL, in a ditch near the town of Loosdrecht. It clearly is the death of Jaap van Praag, who drove into a ditch near Badhoevedorp on 5 August 1987, and died two days later. A violent ending, after all.

The longest remanining Breslauer at Ajax was Kroonenberg, a friend of Michael van Praag's predecessor Ton Harmsen, but he is now dead, too. In 1991, as Max van Praag was dying, his daughter Marga asked if he was afraid to die. His answer: "Well, to tell you the truth, I am not looking forward to it as much as to my 50 years' wedding anniversary."