An exhibition about the "Nazi Olympics" in 1936 and their function as a form of propaganda for the fascist regime opens this week, with parallels to current events in China.

The government used the Olympic Games as a propaganda tool while systematically persecuting minorities, causing other countries to threaten to boycott the event and bringing protestors to blows along the torch route.

Those were the days of the 1936 "Nazi Olympics" in Berlin, the subject of an exhibition that opens Friday at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.

But similar images have become strikingly familiar around the world as China prepares to host the 2008 Olympics this summer in Beijing, with its own torch relay marred by protests over the government's crackdown on Tibet and other human rights abuses.

There have been only marginal calls for a full boycott of Beijing, but some world leaders have said they will not attend the opening ceremonies.

Parallel situations

There is no attempt by the museum to draw comparisons between the Nazi regime's crimes and the Chinese government's actions, but visitors will be struck by parallels in the controversy surrounding both sporting spectacles.

The Berlin Olympics exhibition chronicles the Nazi regime's systematic discrimination of Jewish athletes, its use of the event as propaganda and the sharp debate in the US and other parts of the world over whether to boycott the event.

The exhibition runs until August 17, half-way through the Beijing Olympics, and a Chinese language version of much of the exhibit will be posted on the museum's website.

It first opened in 1996 in conjunction with the Atlanta games. It has since toured the United States and now landed back in Washington with some new additions.

Despite the timing of the reopening, there are no direct references made to current events. Yet the message of the exhibition seems to be that boycotts can be a useful tool in changing the course of history.

"The United States and other Western democracies missed the opportunity to take a stand that, some observers at the time claimed, might have given Hitler pause and bolstered international resistance to Nazi tyranny," reads the opening placard of the exhibition.

Museum officials were careful not to draw too many parallels with the controversies surrounding the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

"Every event is different and what happened here of course was a certain time in history," said Susan Bachrach, the museum's curator of special exhibitions, who led reporters on a tour last Thursday.

Relevance of comparison 

But, she added, the history of the 1936 Olympics could help inform the current debate, and is an event "that one should consider when you're thinking about those larger questions about sports and politics."

The exhibition opens with a map of the 1936 torch relay route, a tradition that actually began with the Berlin Olympics, and a torch used in that first run.

The design was agreed upon "several months" before the fierce protests that broke out along the current torch's route to Beijing, said Bachrach, though she later noted there were also protests along the 1936 trail.

 "Facade of hospitality"

The exhibition then turns to the Nazis' promotion of its young athletes, who were portrayed as "strong, superior Aryans," while leading German Jewish athletes were kept off the squad, said Bachrach.

A case in point is Gretel Bergman, one of Germany's top high jumpers of the time. In June 1936 she matched the German women's high jump record of 1.60 metres; the same mark that would win the gold medal at the Olympics two months later.

Three weeks after the record jump, Bergman was excluded from the German Olympic team, though she was offered a ticket to watch the events.

"Surely, on the basis of your recent performances, you were not counting on a place," reads a copy of her rejection letter from the Reich Sports Office, displayed in the exhibit.

But as the Olympics came along and thousands of athletes descended on Berlin, Nazi Germany turned on the charm, removing anti-Jewish signs and creating a two week "facade of hospitality,", Bachrach said.

With Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime already systematically persecuting Jews and other minorities, the exhibition also discusses the atmosphere in the United States, where some called for a boycott while others called this hypocrisy given the country's own discrimination against African Americans.

The US ended up sending its largest ever contingent of athletes, and runner Jesse Owens would later become the hero and face of the Berlin Olympics, winning four gold medals.

African American athletes like Owens were generally treated well throughout their two week visit. Matthew Robinson, silver medalist in the 200 metres, commented that "at least we didn't have to sit in the back seat of the bus" as in the USA.

Bachrach describes the Nazis' positive treatment of minorities as "a two week hiatus that was created; a little cocoon of tolerance" that would be lifted as soon as the Olympics ended.

Owens' successes have been lauded for disproving the Nazis' theories of racial superiority. The exhibition shows an excerpt from Nazi propaganda leader Joseph Goebbels' diary, calling the victory of Owens and other African Americans a "disgrace" for white athletes.

DPA with Expatica