Olympics website sells T-shirt honoring 1936 Berlin Games hosted by Nazi Germany

Germany hosted both the winter and summer Olympics in 1936.

By Shiryn Ghermezian, The Algemeiner

The official website for the Olympics is selling a “heritage T-shirt” that commemorates the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany, which took place under Adolf Hitler’s Nazi dictatorship.

The front of the garment features a replica of a poster for the 1936 Olympic Games that was created by artist Franz Wurbel.

It shows a man wearing a laurel wreath below the five Olympic rings and a quadriga chariot drawn by horses sitting above the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin.

On top of the chariot is a man holding a spear that features an eagle, resembling the Nazi eagle, that sits on top of a symbol.

The shirt also mentions the dates and location of the Summer Games that took place from Aug. 1-16, 1936, in the German capital.

The garment, which is currently out of stock, is part of a collection of t-shirts being sold by the Olympics that honor each of the modern-era Olympic Games. It was first reported by Germany’s DW.

Germany hosted both the winter and summer Olympics in 1936.

Jews were stripped of their voting rights in March of that year, a month after the Winter Games in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, and Nazi mastermind Heinrich Himmler was appointed chief of German police in June, ahead of the Summer Games in Berlin.

Hitler’s regime temporarily removed anti-Jewish signs around Berlin ahead of the Olympic Games and authorized “a brief relaxation in anti-Jewish activities” in an effort to impress tourists visiting Germany for the sporting event and attract favor among the international community, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

“For two weeks in August 1936, Adolf Hitler’s Nazi dictatorship camouflaged its racist, militaristic character while hosting the Summer Olympics,” the museum states on its website.

“Softpedaling its antisemitic agenda and plans for territorial expansion, the regime exploited the Games to bedazzle many foreign spectators and journalists with an image of a peaceful, tolerant Germany. … The games were a resounding propaganda success for the Nazis. They presented foreign spectators with the image of a peaceful and tolerant Germany.”

In 1931, the International Olympic Committee picked Germany to host the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. In April 1933, Jews were banned from all German athletic organizations, sports facilities, and associations.

However, in an effort to appease the international community, the Nazi regime allowed fencer Helene Mayer, whose father was Jewish, to represent Germany at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin.

She won a silver medal in women’s individual fencing and was forced to perform the Nazi salute on the podium, according to the Holocaust museum. She was the only Jewish athlete to compete on behalf of Germany in the 1936 Summer Games.

A total of nine Jewish athletes won medals in the Berlin Summer Olympics, including Mayer and five Hungarians. The 1936 Games included the first Olympic torch relay.