1936 Summer Olympics

Berlin, Germany

“Military units drilled openly, and though powered aircraft were forbidden under the Versailles Treaty, the strength of the burgeoning Luftwaffe was on conspicuous display over an airfield, where gliders swooped over impressed tourists and Hitler

Youth” (Hillenbrand 31).

“Berlin’s Gypsies and Jewish students had vanished – the Gypsies had been dumped in camps, the Jews confined to the University of Berlin campus – leaving only smiling “Aryans.” The only visible wisp of discord was the broken glass in the windows of Jewish businesses” (31-32).

• Louie Zamperini– 5000m Run

• Jesse Owens– 100m Dash– 200m Dash– Long Jump– 4x100m Relay

“The Olympic village wasn’t empty for long. The cottages became military barracks. With the Olympics over and his usefulness for propaganda expended, the village’s designer, Captain Fürstner, learned that he was to be cashiered from the Wehrmacht because he was a Jew. He killed himself. Less than twenty miles away, in the town of Oranienburg, the first prisoners were being hauled into the Sachsenhausen concentration camp” (37).