A controversial exhibit has opened in Vancouver, depicting the Canadian team at one of the most controversial Olympics ever � the 1936 Summer Games in Berlin, staged by the German Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler
History is history. Anyone even remotely knowledgeable about this period knows about our attitudes towards National Socialism (which ranged from impressed, disgusted, worrisome and indifference) and the '36 games is an interesting examination of those contemporary views. It sounds like a fascinating exhibit.
If you go to the National Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC you will find through radio and film clips that the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany was well known in 1936. There was a lot of debate - at least in the US - as to whether the US should send a team but even then there was a lot of support for Hitler's government - he reduced employment, that sort of thing.
If the exhibit gives a fair assessable of the situation back then it could be valuable as a depiction of this piece of social history.
Boycotting those Olympics would have denied the Jesse Owens triumph which kinda irked Hitler. Not that Irking him was enough, but it's just one of those things that amplifies the utter Fail that was Nazi-ism.
Does anyone remember the old Olympic salute? I doubt it since it was the 1920's or something since it was last popular. Straight arm salute - like the nazi one - only to the right side instead of out front.
To ban this exhibit would be as bad as denying history. To deny history is as bad as rewriting it. It is something that happened and is part of the Olympics. It is good and right that it should be exhibited along with the rest of the history of the games.
ya this seems like a great idea and exhibit as long as people didn't get pist about it and just accepted it and learned from it. this reminds me of the Chinese Olympics that have recently
If the exhibit gives a fair assessable of the situation back then it could be valuable as a depiction of this piece of social history.