Two flags wave in the gentle breeze blowing over the heads of the masses occupying the streets of Berlin. The crowds are happy and excited to be witnessing the upcoming events. Does the combination of symbols hovering above even bother them in the least? Are any of them terrified to see the famous five Olympic rings hanging alongside the Nazi swastika?
Berlin, 1936.
Almost five years earlier, the German capital had been chosen to host the Olympic games of 1936. The decision was a sort of peace offering by the European countries to their defeated, proud neighbor, humbled at their hands during the First World War. The year was 1931, and although the Nazi party had already gained substantial power in Germany, few saw what was coming.
By 1936, everything looked very different. Germany was now under Nazi control, and Nazi racial doctrine was no longer just a terrifying theoretical premise but governmental policy. Concentration camps were established, racial laws passed, signs reading “No Jews and Dogs” were hung in store windows. Jewish blood was made forfeit and Jews were excluded from the public sphere as a whole – this of course included all official sports teams, organizations and arenas.
According to the Nuremberg Laws passed a year earlier, a Jew could not be a German citizen, which naturally meant that they could not represent Germany in any sort of tournament.
The more rumors spread about Hitler’s Germany, the louder the calls became, especially in the United States, to move the Olympics to another country or at least to boycott this round of games.
For a brief moment, Hitler agreed: He at first thought hosting the Olympics was a bad idea, one which did not align with the fascist ideology he created. How could Germany allow impure races on its soil? How could Nazi Germany afford to allow competitions where Aryan athletes, with their blond hair and blue eyes, might find themselves defeated by “subhuman” Blacks, Jews, or homosexuals?
But Minister of Propaganda Josef Goebbels, the man who would embrace anything so long as it served the Nazi interest, convinced Hitler to change his mind. The Olympics could be a golden opportunity to prove to the western world that Germany was a state that could be trusted, an enlightened state which was being smeared with lies and falsehoods. A state which the free countries of the world could happily let control the enormous “living spaces” of Eastern Europe in place of the hated communists.
The Germans hit the ground running. They planned and erected the most glorious Olympic village yet seen in the history of the modern Olympic games, renovating and building installations for the various competitions at an unprecedented level, with the crown jewel being the main Olympic Stadium which contained 110,000 seats.
Alongside these efforts, they worked hard to convince the world, and especially the United States, not to boycott the coming event. The American delegation was the largest and most important in the world; if it boycotted the Olympics or worse – decided on an alternate tournament – all the German efforts would be in vain.
The Nazi propaganda machine, which was already well-oiled and becoming ever more sophisticated, began working on a plan which included three main elements: “cleaning” the city of Berlin from inconvenient signs of repression, choosing a German representative with Jewish blood to take part in the games, and most blatantly of all – inviting an Olympic delegation from the Land of Israel to take part in the competition alongside the other countries of the world.
The man invited to see this “clean” and “renewed” Berlin for himself was the President of the American Olympic Committee, Avery Brundage. Brundage was not a particularly hard nut to crack for the Nazis, as he was one of the greatest opponents of the American boycott effort, and did not hesitate to state that Jewish complaints were intentionally exaggerated and that the boycott effort was an attempt to undermine the global Olympic spirit.
Although their audience was a captive one, the Nazis still left nothing to chance. There would be little opportunity for journalists to stumble upon stories that might damage the Nazi cause. All signs prohibiting Jews from public places were removed. The Nazi daily Der Stürmer was suddenly unavailable at newsstands. The Hitler Youth were ordered not to sing their racist songs for the duration of the games. Homosexual bars and clubs which had been shut down were allowed to reopen, and the police were instructed not to harm Jews, gypsies, or homosexuals in public places.
None of this was the result of any real soul-searching or permanent change of policy, of course. Outside of Berlin, where the world wasn’t watching, things continued very much as usual. Dachau and other concentration camps continued to brutally enslave Jews, gypsies and others who “polluted” the pure Aryan realm, subjecting them to torture and murder. But the city of Berlin, in a chilling prelude to a similar façade that would be created in the ghetto of Theresienstadt – took on a mantle of tolerance and equality for a few very brief moments.
Brundage returned to America and declared that the Jews were in an entirely tolerable state in Germany and all the calls for boycotts were needless.
This was the signal for the next stages of Goebbels’ plan.
Helene Mayer was Hitler’s Jewish fig leaf. At first, Hitler threatened to cancel the Olympics if any Jew represented Germany, but then the German Olympic Committee presented the talented fencer, who was half-Jewish and a bona fide star athlete. At the 1928 Olympics, she had won the gold medal, and though she did not win any medals at the 1932 Olympics, she was still greatly admired.
The most important detail in her favor? She wasn’t “really” Jewish; only her father was. Her mother was Aryan and she herself lived a life free of any sign of Jewishness, including public declarations disavowing any Jewish identity. The cherry on top was her appearance: She looked like the perfect Aryan – blonde, tall, and green eyed. She was the epitome of what an ideal German woman should look like under the Nazi regime.
Hitler approved her as the representative, and even allowed the existence of a “training camp” for Jewish athletes – none of whom were actually allowed to represent the country.
After the public areas of Berlin were sufficiently cleansed and the German delegation had its impressive fig leaf athlete, the time came for the third phase of the plan.
To round out the picture, Goebbels needed to bring a truly Jewish delegation to the Olympics to show off to the world.
The Palestine National Olympic Committee was formed in 1933, the year the Nazis rose to power. Its rules stated that it “represent[ed] the Jewish National Home”. A year later, it was recognized by the International Olympic Committee, and by 1935 it was accepted as a partner with full rights.
Many questions loomed over this achievement: How could a body not even representing a sovereign and independent state be allowed to join this prestigious club, and why now? Did the Nazi regime, so desperate to show off its hosting of a majority Jewish delegation, competing under the Jewish flag, have anything to do with it?
Either way, an official request that the Palestine National Olympic Committee participate in the Berlin Olympics was placed on the desk of Frederick Kisch, chairman of the committee.
The request was sent through diplomatic channels – Dr. Theodor Lewald, President of the Organizing Committee in Berlin, sent the request to Dr. Heinrich Wolf, Nazi Germany’s General Consul in Jerusalem. It may sound very strange today, but until 1939, a Nazi consulate operated in Jerusalem, located downtown in the Hotel Fast. Wolf himself was no enthusiastic Nazi, to say the least, and he refused at first to raise the Nazi flag at the consulate. He was however ultimately forced to fall in line.
When Wolf received the invitation, he was very blunt with Lewald: There was no chance Jews would be allowed to participate in the Berlin Olympics, “and I don’t think there’s any need to explain the motives to you,” he said in his letter.
In the meantime, Hebrew language papers in the Land of Israel and around the world began to report on these negotiations, and a public outcry emerged. Serious complaints were made against Kisch for not summarily rejecting the request.
Only after the publication of the Nuremberg Laws the following year did Kisch officially refuse in the name of the Olympic Committee, with an unconvincing explanation put forward – that the athletes were not yet ready to compete in the Olympics.
Kisch felt a complete and blunt rejection of the proposal would jeopardize the safety of German Jews, but Jews both at home and abroad were not impressed.
On August 1, 1936, the Berlin Olympic games officially began. Tens of thousands of onlookers screamed “sieg heil!” in unison when Hitler made his entrance Olympic Stadium. Spyridon Louis, the Greek marathon runner who won a gold medal at the Athens Olympics, the first modern Olympic tournament, presented the Fuehrer with an olive branch. Members of the Austrian delegation and other European delegations gave the Nazi salute when they passed by him. The members of the American delegation settled for removing their hats as an honorific gesture which they would later claim was “minimal.”
The power of Nazi Germany was now fully on display, before the eyes of the entire world.
When Helene Mayer went onto the podium after winning the silver medal – next to two other Jewish fencers who won gold and bronze – she wore the official delegation uniform bearing the swastika symbol, and gave the Nazi salute.
The Americans, in a very controversial last-minute decision, removed two Jews from their delegation, Maty Glickman and Sam Stoller, and replaced them with two other runners. Jesse Owens, the indisputable star of the Olympics, would later remark, “Hitler didn’t snub me—it was [Roosevelt] who snubbed me. The president didn’t even send me a telegram.”
But other Jews represented other countries and won a slew of medals, to the dismay of the Nazis.
After the conclusion of the Olympics, the Nazi machine went back into full gear. Berlin was once again carpeted with anti-Jewish signs. But the prohibition on Jews in public areas or insulting caricatures would soon become the least of German Jewry’s problems. This would shortly afterwards be true for European Jewry as a whole.
The next two Olympics did not take place, in 1940 and 1944, as the world was busy trying to stop that same Germany which had so graciously hosted their delegations in 1936. In the first Olympics following the war in 1948, Germany was not allowed to participate, and the Jews of the Land of Israel were busy with more existential problems.
More than 70 Jewish athletes representing 20 other countries did take part, though. Among these was French Jewish swimmer Alfred Nakache, who had been liberated from Auschwitz just three years earlier. His wife and daughter were both murdered there.
It was only in 1952, in Helsinki, that the blue and white flag was finally flown at the head of a delegation of athletes representing the independent State of Israel.
