The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is being criticized for selling merchandise dedicated to the 1936 Berlin Games, which Adolf Hitler used to showcase his Nazi ideology, UNN reports, citing CNN.
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The Olympic website, currently in the spotlight due to the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics, features a men's T-shirt dedicated to the controversial Nazi Games. The apparel, displayed as "out of stock," is part of the IOC's "Heritage Collection."
The T-shirt features the original 1936 Games poster designed by Franz Wurbel. It depicts an athletic male figure crowned with a laurel wreath, with the Olympic rings in the background. Below it are the Brandenburg Gate with the caption: "Germany Berlin Olympic Games 1936."
The Heritage Collection landing page on the Olympic website states: "Each Games reflects a unique time and place in history, when the world came together to celebrate humanity."
Hitler used the games, held three and a half years after the Nazis came to power, as a spectacle of Nazi propaganda. He sought to demonstrate the racial superiority of so-called Aryan athletes and openly demeaned African-American participants as "subhuman."
Nevertheless, African-American athlete Jesse Owens became the star of the games, ascending the podium to receive four gold medals, surrounded by people giving the Nazi salute.
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Christine Schmidt is co-director of the Vienna Holocaust Library in London, the world's oldest archive of Holocaust materials.
She told CNN: "The Nazis used the 1936 Olympics to showcase their oppressive regime to the world, seeking to smooth international relations while preventing almost all German-Jewish athletes from competing, arresting 800 Roma living in Berlin, and hiding from world visitors signs of brutal antisemitic violence and propaganda. The Nazis' fascist and antisemitic propaganda permeated their advertising for the games, and many international Jewish athletes chose not to compete. The IOC should have considered whether any aesthetic perception of these games could be comfortably separated from the horror that followed."
The decision to sell the T-shirt was also criticized by Scott Saunders, CEO of the International March of the Living, an annual educational program that will bring about 8,000 people to the former Auschwitz death camp this year to commemorate the Holocaust.
He told CNN: "As the world reflects on this latest controversy, it's impossible not to remember that we are approaching the 90th anniversary of the 1936 Berlin Olympics — an event that the Nazi regime used to legitimize itself on the world stage, when the persecution of Jews was already in full swing. Sport has the power to unite, inspire, and elevate the best in humanity. But history reminds us that it can also be manipulated to sanitize hatred and normalize exclusion. The lesson of Berlin is urgent. When antisemitism resurfaces in public life, whether in stadiums, on streets, or online, silence is not neutrality. It is complicity."
The IOC defended its decision to produce and sell the T-shirt. In a statement sent to CNN, an IOC spokesperson said that the Olympic Heritage Collection "celebrates 130 years of Olympic art and design" and includes all previous games.
The spokesperson added: "While we certainly acknowledge the historical issues of 'Nazi propaganda' associated with the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, we must also remember that the Berlin Games featured 4483 athletes from 49 countries in 149 medal events. Many of them impressed the world with their athletic achievements, including Jesse Owens."