San Diego, CA (special) -- A traveling exhibition prepared by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum on the Berlin Olympics of 1936 came on view in San Diego this week with the reopening of the Hall of Champions in new quarters in Balboa Park.

Displayed in the basement hall of the refurbished Federal Building, the 7,000-square-foot exhibit uses photographs, graphics and a well-assembled collection of video clips to tell, in timeline fashion, about the events leading up to these Olympics, in which Adolf Hitler hoped to showcase 'Aryan superiority." The exhibit also tells about high and low points of the international games, and about some of the aftermath of the nazi Olympics.

Kate Breece, education director for the Hall of Champions, said arrangements have been made for a variety of speakers to give lectures at the museum on related themes. Marty Glickman, a Jewish sprinter who made the U.S. Olympic team in 1936 but wasn't permitted to compete, was the July 1 opening speaker (see related story). along with Richard Mandell, author of The Nazi Olympics. Other speakers this month will include former San Diego Charger Ron Mix on July 6 on tolerance in sports, and Marlene Owens Rankin on July 14 in a panel discussion on the accomplishments of her late father Jesse Owens, who won four gold medals at the 1936 Olympics. More speakers and panels are planned through the exhibit's closing on Sept. 30. The first section of the exhibit explains that the city of Berlin was awarded the 1936 Olympics in 1931-- one year before

Olympic torch carrier passes massed nazi troups in Berlin

the summer Olympics were held in Los Angeles in 1932 and two years before Adolf Hitler became Germany's chancellor. It also tells how Hitler almost immediately after assuming power began to suspend civil liberties in Germany. Some concentration camps already were in place before the Olympic Games were held. Photographs show that "No Jews allowed" signs had been posted throughout Germany, although they were taken down in Berlin during the games in deference to international opinion. The section also backgrounds visitors on nazi concepts of racial superiority.

The second section of the exhibit deals with the "nazification" of sport. Breece, a former history teacher in Virginia, explained that after Germany was defeated in World War I, the Treaty of Versailles dictated that Germany's military be severely limited in size.

In response, Germany under the guise of athletic training readied its people to become soldiers. "So mass calisthenics turned into calisthenics with a rifle; sporting events turned into throwing a hand grenade or diving with a full pack," Breece said.

Meanwhile, in order to compete for a position on the German Olympic team, Germans citizens were required to be members of recognized sports clubs. Such clubs were closed to Jews, Gypsies , and to other groups. Among the well-qualified athletes who Germany thus barred was high jumper Gretel Bergmann, known today as Margaret Lambert. She is scheduled to be a speaker at the museum Sept. 6. 

Bergmann was well enough known in the international track and field community that pressure was put on the Germans to give her a chance to compete. According to the exhibit's printed narrative: "In June, 1936, Bergmann equaled the German women's high jump record of 5'3" at a trial meet in Stuttgart but the Germans used only two of their three spots allocated for the high jump and dropped her from the competition." When nazi authorities notified Bergmann of their decision, they sneeringly offered her standing room only tickets to watch the other athletes compete.

With the racial and anti-Semitic policies of Adolf Hitler becoming well-known throughout the world, there were some calls for a boycott of the Olympic Games. There even was an abortive attempt to mount alternative games in Spain, but this effort was derailed when Spain was plunged into its civil war.

The debate over whether the United States should boycott the games pitted Avery Brundage, who was president of the United States Olympic Committee, against boycott spokesman Jeremiah Mahoney. According to Breece, some evidence recently has been uncovered by the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles that Brundage was anything but unbiased on this issue: his company had been offered contracts by the German government to build embassies and consulates in the United States.

No such information ever came to light in the public debate, which, according to Breece ran along these lines: Opponents of the boycott said "If we cancel, we would not give the athletes an opportunity to compete and would look as if the United States were backing out of a commitment." Those favoring the boycott said that Hitler's racist and anti-Semitic policies were diametrically opposed to the Olympic spirit. To go would hand Hitler a propaganda victory by conferring upon him the tacit approval of the rest of the world.

The debate was closely paralleled in 1980 when U.S. President Jimmy Carter decided to boycott the Olympics in Moscow following the invasion by the Soviet Union of Afghanistan.

Interestingly, the exhibit on the 1936 Olympics looks at the reactions of two minority groups in the United States -- Jews and African-Americans -- to the proposed boycott. While the organized Jewish community was an advocate of staying away (though not all Jews agreed); African-Americans argued that white America was hypocritical to condemn racism in Germany while fostering it in the United States. 

The African-Americans argued, "We still have these racist policies; why should we say anything to Germany when we have them here at home?" Breece related. "And the other thing that they were saying is that if African-Americans go and compete and win, then that is going to say something to Hitler." In effect, it would put the lie to Hitler's belief in Aryan superiority.

Among those who favored the boycott was the Long Island University basketball team, which was predominantly Jewish and "which would even not go to the preliminaries .. and they were an excellent team," Breece said.

Accounts of the boycott debate are accompanied by exhibits showing the flavor of the times in the United States. For example, a classified advertisement from the period wanted a bookkeeper who was a rapid typist, brunette, attractive and Protestant. Another advertised for a stenographer and bookkeeper, between the age of 24 and 28, single, brunette, with good experience and Christian.

Breece said in the 1930s it was not uncommon to see signs at potential job sites on the East Coast reading "Irish need not apply" and "Jews need not apply" and on the West Coast, signs discouraging Chinese and Japanese.

"We surely don't have a clean slate," Breece said. "Much as we would like to think that."

Next came exhibits on the Olympics themselves -- both the winter games in Garmish, Bavaria, and the summer games in Berlin. In the winter games, Rudy Ball, son of a Christian and a Jew, was permitted to participate on the German hockey team. 

In the summer games, fencer Helene Mayer -- blonde-hair, blue-eyed daughter of a Christian mother and Jewish father -- was permitted to compete in the foil competition. She won the silver medal, and when she mounted the podium, she gave the stiff armed 'Heil Hitler' salute required of German team members. German photographers froze the moment and circulated the photograph widely. But a video of the occasion shows that Mayer actually put her arm up and down quite rapidly, as if to minimize as much as possible any recognition of Germany's nazi overlords.

Among the Jewish athletes chosen by the United States to compete on its various teams was Herman Goldberg, who played catcher on the exhibition baseball team. Another was Sam Balter who played and won a team gold medal on the U.S. basketball team (in the first year basketball was recognized as an Olympic sport). Another two were runners Sam Stoller and Marty Glickman. 

According to the printed narrative of the exhibition: "A controversial move at the games was the benching of two American Jewish runners, Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller. Both had trained for the 4 x 100 meter relay but on the day before the event they were replaced by Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe, the team's two fastest sprinters. There were various reasons given for the change. The coaches claimed that they needed their two fastest runners to win the race. Glickman has said that coach Dean Cromwell and Avery Brundage (president of the USOC) were motivated both by anti-Semitism and the desire to spare the fuhrer the embarrassment of the sight of two American Jews on the podium. Stoller did not believe anti-Semitism was involved but the 21-year-old described the incident in his diary as the most humiliating episode in his life."
(See related story).

Owens already had won three gold medals at the Olympics; winning the relay was his fourth gold medal performance. Breece said there is a myth that Hitler specifically refused to shake Owens' hand because he was African-American. In fact, Hitler decided in advance of the Olympics not to shake the hands of any of the athletes, lest some of the winners be non-Aryan. Leaders of the international games had told Hitler that he could choose to shake the hands of all the winning athletes, or none of them, but could not selectively honor some and not others.

Besides Mayer in the foil competition and Balter for basketball team play, there were 10 other Jewish medalists at the 1936 games, according to the exhibit. They were: 1) Gerald Blitz, Belgium, water polo; bronze; 2) Gyorgy Brody, Hungary, water polo, gold; 3) Ibolya K. Csak, Hungary, high jump, gold; 4) Robert Fein, Austria, lightweight division weight lifting, gold; 5) Endre Kabos, Hungary, individual saber, gold and team saber, gold; 6) Karoly Karpati, Hungary, lightweight division free style wrestling, gold; 7) Irving Maretzky, Canada, basketball, silver; 8) Miklos Sarkany, Hungary, water polo, gold; 9) Ilona Shacherer-Elek, Hungary, individual foil, gold, and 10) Jadwiga Wajs, Poland, discus throw, silver.

The final section of the exhibit deals with what happened in the years following the games. Krystallnacht--which most historians date as the beginning of the Holocaust in November 1938--occurred two years later. The exhibit traces what happens to various athletes who ran afoul of the nazis subsequently. Breece said there was a "German wrestler who refused to say 'Heil Hitler' and give the salute and was beheaded." Margaret Lambert--the former Gretel Bergmann--tells her personal story on a video that may be found in this section.

As one who taught history for 16 years, Breece suggested that it may get the younger generation, which has little or no knowledge of the Holocaust, to come to understand "how easily we can be fooled; that if we are not careful, really careful, it doesn't take very much to slip over the edge. Say economic times get bad, you really want a job, and here comes a guy who says 'I will give you a job, but you can't talk and have freedom of the press and you can't assemble where you want to -- but I will give you a job.' How easy is that to fall for when you are hungry, and how easy is it to allow a group to become a scapegoat?"

Breece said in the museum world, visitors sometimes are described as "streakers, strollers and stalkers." Streakers "are the ones who come through here and they may read the big red letters, but they will get the big picture." 

Strollers are "the normal ones; they will come through here and read parts of the text, then they will move on to the next, and they will be drawn to whatever they are interested in. We estimate the exhibit will take them between 45 minutes and an hour." The stalkers "will be here 3-4 hours at a time, reading every single piece of every text, and watching the films again and again."

In addition to the exhibits which came from the Holocaust Museum, Breece is encouraging local San Diegans who may have had an experience with the 1936 Olympic Games, however peripheral, to make their souvenirs available for the exhibit.

For example, she said, "we have from a gentleman who was a hockey coach for the Belgian team not only his personal memorabilia but a vase about eight inches tall which has the Olympic rings on it, with the big German eagle. Also we have gotten some promotional items on the Olympics, and we have the photographs of a woman who went to the Olympics and took pictures of Jesse Owens."

The Hall of Champions is open daily from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Admission is $7 adult; $5 senior and military and $4 children.