The Olympics conjure images of world-wide camaraderie and honest competition, but these noble ideals aren't always reality.
The 1936 Olympics in Berlin, a temporary cloak for Adolf Hitler's sinister plans, presented to the world a peaceful and orderly Germany.Sixty years later, a Holocaust Memorial Museum exhibit examines the hypocrisy behind the Nazi Olympics propaganda.
"The Nazi Olympics Berlin 1936" opens July 19, the day of opening ceremonies in Atlanta, and will remain at the museum for a year before traveling on a three-year U.S. tour.
"It's an opportunity for the museum to reach new audiences through sports," said Gregory Naranjo, the exhibition's developer.
Photographs, headlines, propaganda posters and videotapes of Jewish survivors telling of the Berlin Olympics recreate the image and the reality of the 1936 Games.
The International Olympic Committee awarded Berlin those Games in 1931, two years before Hitler's accession of power. But as the competition approached, people around the world heard of Hitler's militaristic control and the Nazis' racist policies, primarily against Jews.
During the three years of Hitler's rule prior to the Olympics, Germany had withdrawn from the League of Nations, built concentration camps, passed laws reducing the civil rights of Jews, prohibited marriage of Jews and non-Jews, posted anti-Semitic signs, boycotted Jewish businesses and begun a military draft.
"It was a very rapid and dramatic transformation of the status of Jews in Germany," said historian Susan Bachrach, who wrote the exhibit's script. Blacks, Gypsies and others who were not Aryan - the all-white "master race" - also were persecuted.
In the United States, Jewish leaders, newspaper editors and amateur sports leaders urged an Olympic boycott because of Germany's racist policies. At the same time, the black press pointed out the hypocrisy of fighting discrimination in Nazi Germany when blacks faced discrimination in the segregated United States, Bachrach said.
The United States participated in the Berlin Games. Nazi propaganda had convinced many that Germany was a peaceful, hospitable nation of strong Aryan athletes.
The German Olympic team, however, epitomized Hitler's political stance of eliminating "inferior" people. The team excluded non-Aryan athletes, except for one token Jew - fencer Helene Mayer - who was included to advertise German tolerance, Bachrach said.
The sports challenge served an ulterior motive: preparing citizens for battle. The Nazis set aside academics in schools to focus on physical activities, such as tossing fake hand grenades, according to Bachrach.
At the games, American black track star Jesse Owens seemed to destroy Hitler's claim of white superiority by winning four gold medals - more than any previous athlete. Owens said he was not bothered when Hitler avoided shaking his hand because "I didn't go to the Games for a handshake."
Despite Hitler's racism, German propaganda had a temporary impact. American journalists and athletes came home touting German hospitality and the fantastic facilities.
But the image was paper-thin. Soon the facade of festive ceremonies and the thrill of competition faded into the horrors of war and death.