The Republic of Sitrah Ahra
Daniel Y. Harris

Neglected to be filmed in Leni Riefenstahl’s 1936 Nazi propaganda film, Olympia, The Republic of Sitrah Ahra was among the forty-nine nations who participated in the Summer Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany, in 1936. Its four athletes were world-class fencers, having medalled in the Individual Foil, the Individual Epee, and the Individual Sabre, in Sitrah Ahra’s Combat Open held in the winter of 1935. Unique in the history of fencing training, the Sitran fencing coach trained his fencers to fence like a Hamlet or Macbeth at the end of their respective final acts. Foil in hand, Sitran fencers would speak Hamlet’s or Macbeth’s lines while jolting the epee forward. As death was the fate of the Prince of Denmark and the Thane of Cawdor, the fencers would court its apocalyptic edge, to overcome it as an obstacle, were such an obstacle present in Berlin. Effective as this system of fencing proved to be, the Sitranites were no match for the Italian Giulio Gaundini, the French Edouard Gardere and the Italian Giorgi Bocchino.

In fact, they were already dead and therefore difficult to see. Issues of representation make it difficult to fully document the competition. For example, during the last round of the Men’s Individual Foil for Gold, the strongest of the Sitran fencers actually stuck his foil so deeply into the chest of his Italian opponent that his entire body, with foil, passed through his opponent’s body. The Sitran fencer simply disappeared into the body of the Italian fencer. Little was made of this strange occurrence. The Italian fencer won the Gold Medal.

Sitranites are not known for their patriotism, unless one brings up the Games of the XI Olympiad, in Berlin in 1936. They carry within their cloaks of memorabilia a flag without an anthem: “The Republic of Sitrah Ahra,” with its fencer sporting a disfigured torso. On such occasions, some tear. Others stare, while others look straight through one another to exhume innards with acidic delight.

Daniel Y. Harris, M.Div., (University of Chicago) is the author of two poetry chapbooks: Unio Mystica (Cross-Cultural Communications Press 2009), Hyperlinks of Anxiety (Pudding House Press 2009) and co-author, with Adam Shechter, of the experimental chapbook, Paul Celan and the Messiah’s Broken Levered Tongue (Cervena Barva Press 2009.) Among his credits are: The Pedestal Magazine, Exquisite Corpse, In Posse Review, European Judaism, SoMa Literary Review, Mad Hatters’ Review, Poetry Salzburg Review, Wheelhouse Magazine, Moria, Ygdrasil, Wilderness House Literary Review, Poetry Magazine.com, Denver Quarterly, Convergence and The Other Voices International Project. Among his art exhibitions credits are: The Jewish Community Library of San Francisco, Market Street Gallery, The Euphrat Museum and The Center for Visual Arts. He earns his living as Northwest Regional Director of Development for Canine Companions for Independence. His website is www.danielyharris.com.