Born in the city of Kassel, Germany in 1932, David ‘Nachum’ Buch was an only child to his parents, who witnessed the rise of Nazism and moved to Palestine in 1934.
Nachum’s family found early life in Palestine very challenging. They lived in Tel Aviv, in Shpinoza Street. Nachum first started swimming around the age of 10. The only swimming pool in the city at the time was at a nearby orange plantation where today the town hall stands. The plantation had a small concrete pool on a hilltop that was emptied and refilled frequently since there was no chlorination.
Nachum first swam for Hapoel and soon after joined Brit Maccabim Atid when it was founded by Yona Hirschler, one of his father’s colleagues. Brit Maccabim Atid was a club that focused on developing youth and remained the most successful sporting club in Israel until the 1970s.
Around the age of 13, his coach appointed Nachum as an assistant to coach the beginners, before joining the two-hour training session.
Nachum quickly improved his times as he trained three times a week and participated in competitions at Rishon LeZion, Gedera, Rehovot and sometimes in Haifa’s Bat Galim pool - the only 50 metre pool in the country.
At the age of 14, Nachum recorded his first junior record time, recording a time of 1:04.7 in the 100m freestyle at Haifa’s Bat Galim pool during Maccabi Haifa’s 20th anniversary event.
At the age of 15, Nachum stepped in as interim coach for Brit Maccabim Atid when his coach was called up to the army. In 1950, during the third Maccabiah Game, Nachum won a gold medal in the 4 x 200m freestyle relay alongside Eitan Freud, Yeshayahu Albaum and Arnon Torin with a result of 10:07.6, and he finished fifth in the 100m freestyle with a time of 1:06.1.
1952 was the year of the Helsinki Olympic Games. Nachum was released from army service by being the first and only Israeli swimmer to be selected by the Israeli Olympic Committee to represent Israel. Israel was only able to send a very small team of athletes to participate in swimming, basketball, diving and shooting. Nachum didn’t have a coach to travel with the team, and trained by himself. At the Helsinki Games, Nachum competed in the 100m freestyle where he recorded a time of 1:05.6 in the heats.
In 1953 at the age of 21, Nachum won the 10km Sea of Galilee race swimming across Lake Kineret. At a Brit Maccabim Atid team indoor swimming competition held in Holon in September 1954 Nachum set a new Israeli record in the 100m freestyle with a result of 1:02.7.
1958 onwards
Professional coaching career
In 1958, Nachum was offered a scholarship by the president of his club, Brit Maccabim Atid, to attend the sports academy in Cologne, Germany and study physical education for a year in order to become a professional swim coach. One year later in 1959, Yale University’s renowned swimming coach and former Olympic Coach, Bob Kiphuth invited Nachum to spend a year living with him while studying coaching as his assistant. During this tenure, Nachum was offered the position of assistant coach at Yale but had a tough decision to make. His club in Israel had written to him saying that things were falling apart and they desperately needed him to return home, so in 1960, he returned to Israel and became the coach for Brit Maccabim Atid as well as the national swimming team.
Nachum coached the Israeli swimming team in the 1968 Mexico Olympics. Prominent swimmers he coached included Israeli Olympic swimmers Shoshana Ribner, Amiram Trauber, and Amnon Kraus, as well as Israeli champions Dorit Zaltz, Hanna Maron, Gabriel Nest, David Wiseman and Danny Karpan.
After marrying an Australian woman on holiday in Israel in 1967, Nachum had 2 children and migrated to Australia in the 1970s for family reasons. In 1980, when a new swimming pool was built at Mount Scopus College in Burwood, Nachum was hired as the swimming teacher, and continued there up until 1994. After that he coached at Ajax, and was involved in radio broadcasting, providing on air sports updates in Hebrew for the SBS radio program.
Nachum was very proud of his lifelong participation in consecutive Maccabiah Games since 1950, and received recognition by being asked to carry the Maccabi flag in the opening ceremony at the 2002 Games in Jerusalem.
In total, he had represented Israel in three Maccabiah Games as an Israeli swimmer, in two Games in water polo, and representing Australia in three Maccabiah Games as the swimming coach, and the remainder he attended as an official.
All the while, he travelled back to Israel annually to visit his best friends, swimmers, cousins and most importantly his mother. In retirement, Nachum remained competitive in sport and enjoyed playing volleyball at Habonim Dror in Elsternwick every Sunday morning with other seniors in the late 1990s. Ten years later, he started playing lawn bowls on a weekly basis at Armadale Bowls Club.
One of his happiest moments in retirement was being honored at a surprise 80th birthday party held in Israel in his honour, with over 100 ex-swimmers and family members present.
He summarized his life in Australia as follows:
“While I am happy here, I go back to Israel every year to visit friends and swimmers. I have a deep attachment to Israel. I’ve never made the kind of friends here that I have in Israel but that is probably true of many migrants. I follow Israeli politics keenly and always like to know what’s going on there. In sports matches, I always barrack for Australia … except if they play against Israel. My heart is still there.”
This Obituary was written by his son, Jonathan Buch
