The Belvédère Swimming Pool
Many Jews took part in competitive swimming and water polo (including Gilbert and Zizi Léon Taïeb and Gilbert and Edouard Naim, Georges and Hubert Hayat). This was at a height in the 1930s when swimming and water polo was very mediatised. In 1932 a swimming pool the Belvédère swimming pool was built in Tunis. It was considered the finest in North Africa. Champion swimmers who took part in competitions in France and North Africa trained daily – sometimes even twice a day – at the Belvédère swimming pool. This included the Cercle des nageurs de Tunis, whose membership was overwhelmingly Jewish. Its relay team (Gilbert and Zizi Léon Taïeb and Gilbert and Edouard Naim) became champions of France in 1936. Zizi Léon Taïeb qualified for 100 metre backstroke at the 1936 Summer Olympic Games in Berlin. The Vichy government’s antisemitic laws put an end to the Cercle des nageurs de Tunis.
