Until today I was completely oblivious to the fact that, just prior to World War II, Germany hosted the 1936 Olympic Summer Games in Berlin. My first thought was, "Well, I took History in Grade 10. The second World War didn't start until 1939.. so Nazis wouldn't have been a problem during the Olympic Games." Well, I was wrong.
The Nazi regime started in 1933 when Adolph Hitler became chancellor of Germany and quickly took the country away from a German democracy and into a one party dictatorship. The city of Berlin was voted to host the Olympics in 1931 before the Nazis took power. Once they came into power in 1933 many other countries began discussing the idea of boycotting the Olympics. The United Kingdom, France, Sweden, The Netherlands and Czechoslovakia held large campaigns to relocate the games. In 1935 The Amateur Athletic Union of the United States voted in favour of the Berlin Olympics, and many other countries followed along.
Hitler initially viewed the Olympics as the perfect platform to spread his views on Racial Supremacy. The official Nazi party paper wrote that Jews and Black people should not be allowed to participate in the games. They also had a strong hatred towards homosexuals. Once the Nazi party started receiving threats of the games being boycotted Hitler quickly changed his tune and allowed Jews and Black people to participate. He also had Berlin 'cleaned up' and removed various anti-Semitic signs that were all over the city that said "Jews not wanted". Hitler did everything he could to portray Germany as a peaceful, tolerant nation.
Recently it seems that we've found ourselves in a similar predicament with the Olympic Games in Sochi. Here we have a country that is strictly opposed to homosexuality. They ban all 'homosexual propaganda" and are known to persecute Lesbians and Gays. Vladimir Putin recently said that Lesbian and Gay people should "leave children alone" while visiting in Russia.
This obviously leads to the question, "Should we be allowing a blatant, anti-homosexual Country to host the Olympics?"
Even in the face of anti-Semitism and discrimination against Black people our country still took part in the 1936 Olympics in Germany. I can understand the view point many have today of competing for the sake of showing Russia that Gay and Lesbian people 'aren't that bad'. However, when do you put your foot down and decide that you are not going to contribute to a nation that exhibits such intolerance and discrimination?
I'm not judging those athletes who chose to participate in the Sochi Olympic Games. Perhaps what an 'intolerant' country needs is a healthy display of 'tolerance' from more open countries as a demonstration of what true human decency looks like. Maybe our presence in Sochi gave hope to other Gays and Lesbians living in Russia. I hope so.
My hope is that we do not rein act the tolerance displayed in 1936 in Berlin. I'm not saying that I foresee Russia attempting world domination, but I would hate to think that in some way our attendance at the Olympic games promoted discrimination. Perhaps our contribution to the Sochi Olympic games somehow condoned their countries behaviour and mistakenly showed tolerance of it.
I don't know what the right answer is, but I think it's definitely an issue that applies to various other aspects of discrimination and intolerance, and it's something that everyone needs to be mindful of.
Cheers,
Bootsy
No comments:
Post a Comment