GERMANY/FILE: German exhibit casts light on Nazi influence during 1936 Winter Olympics in Garmisch

Record ID: 329661

  • Title: GERMANY/FILE: German exhibit casts light on Nazi influence during 1936 Winter Olympics in Garmisch
  • Date: 16th February 2011
  • Summary: PAN DOWN PHOTOGRAPH OF SKI ARENA PHOTOGRAPH ON DISPLAY
  • Embargoed: 3rd March 2011 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Germany
  • Country: Germany
  • Topics: Sports
  • Reuters ID: LVAAFSOI8G78JOAMPM5YVZD51SMF
  • Story Text: "The Other Side of the Medal" is an exhibition which opened in the German ski resort of Garmisch-Partenkirchen on Tuesday (February 21), trying to show how Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler abused the 1936 Winter Olympics for his cause.
    A local historian and former teacher from this Bavarian town was the driving force behind the project which remembers the Games 75 years later.
    Earlier celebrations to mark round anniversaries of the games in Garmisch-Partenkirchen left out the darker side of the event's Nazi past.
    The exhibition shows posters and signs directing racist language against black people and Jewish people at the time.
    "It was definitely a wonderful sports event for those who took part and who still praised it long after the war," said 68-year-old Alois Schwarzmueller.
    "They are saying that they hardly noticed anything about the political circumstances. A lot of young people who at the time participated as officials stressed over and over again that they did not notice how they became the victims of power manipulation and power abuse."
    Schwarzmueller, who for years worked on unfolding his town's Nazi past, said "it's very important that people finally deal with the political background and that they shake off the fear by saying: we want to know what happened."
    As Munich and Garmisch-Partenkirchen together compete to host the 2018 Olympic Winter Games, Schwarzmueller said it was "appropriate that we show to those who will vote in July that finally, even in Garmisch-Partenkirchen people got rid of the burden not of the Nazi past, but of the burden of having it kept secret for so long."
    The exhibition "The Other Side of the Medal" opens to the public on February 16 and will remain open until May 1.
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