Organized and circulated by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., "The Nazi Olympics Berlin 1936" is the inaugural event in the San Diego Hall of Champions' new home in the remodeled Federal Building in Balboa Park. Continuing through Sept. 30, it is located next to "WWII Through Russian Eyes," another excellent historical exhibit.

Like many Olympics enthusiasts around the world, I believed that the ritual carrying of the flame from the site of the original games to the modern site is an ancient tradition, begun by the Greeks.

Wrong. The idea was conceived by Adolf Hitler and company for the 1936 Olympics. The poster boy or role model for Hitler's master race was tall, blond and blue-eyed. I remember them well, those Hitler youth. They were goose-stepping, wooing my teen-age sisters, and Heil-Hitlering at South Carolina's Tricemount Terrace, where their families and ours vacationed in 1939.

I rode a mule named Jack there in the Smoky Mountains while in Nazi Germany millions of Jews were rounded up and exterminated, along with homosexuals, the mentally and physically disabled, Gypsies and mixed-race children born of German mothers and African colonial soldiers stationed in the Rhineland following World War I.

When Hitler came to power as chancellor of Germany in 1933, he set about transforming the weak German democracy, which in 1931 had been awarded the 1936 Olympic Games, into a one-party, fascist state. He used the Olympics as a showcase to convince the world that Germany had more than recovered from its defeat in the war, was hospitable and efficient at organizing the games and was competitive (and superior) in athletics.

Never mind that during the Winter Games, held at Garmisch-Partenkirchen in the Bavarian Alps, Hitler ordered anti-Jewish signs temporarily removed from public view. At the insistence of the International Olympic Committee, German officials even allowed part-Jewish Rudi Ball to compete on their nation's hockey team.

Nonetheless, Western journalists observed German troop maneuvers at Garmisch. A mere 12 days following the winter Olympics and five months prior to the Summer Games, German troops marched into the demilitarized zone between France and Germany. Such a reoccupation of the Rhineland was a serious violation of the 1919 treaty of Versailles, as was military conscription of any kind. Discussions of an Olympic boycott, once at fever pitch, were briefly revived, but the United States and 48 other countries, more than in any previous Olympics, participated in the August Berlin Games.

"The Nazi Olympics" features the touching stories of athletes who boycotted or were barred from the games as well as those who participated. In testimony recorded by the U.S. Holocaust Museum, African-American 800-meter gold medalist John Woodruff remarks, "After the Olympics I wanted to compete at Annapolis, at the Naval Academy, and they wouldn't allow me to come because I was black. Things hadn't changed, things hadn't changed."

There are other personal accounts, including that of German Jewish high-jumper Gretel Bergmann, now Margaret Lambert, who was excluded by her own country from participating. She received a note from her athletic club saying she could no longer be a member because she was Jewish; then later a letter that stated: "In view of the fact that you have been doing very poorly lately (she consistently beat others in pre-Olympic competition), we did not select you for the Olympic team. Heil Hitler."

Repudiating the Nazi ideal of an Anglo-Saxon master race, African-Americans won 14 medals, nearly one-fourth of the 56 awarded to the U.S. team. Still German news reports referred to the Black Americans, including four gold medal winner Jesse Owens, as team "auxiliaries."

Historical photographs, written documents, film footage, propaganda posters and additional athlete testimonies make up "The Nazi Olympics Berlin 1936."

The final images are of Olympic athletes who died in the Holocaust.

THE DETAILS

The Nazi Olympics Berlin 1936

When: 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. daily

Where: San Diego Hall of Champions, 2131 Pan American Plaza (at Presidents Way), Balboa Park, San Diego

Admission: $7 adults; seniors and military $5; children $4.

Information: (619) 234-2544 and www.sandiegosports.org

Published 7/2/1999