UT Austin has partnered with the U.S. Holocaust Museum to host the traveling exhibit “The Nazi Olympics: Berlin 1936,” July 6 through Jan. 29, at Royal–Texas Memorial Stadium. It is free and open to the public.
The exhibit commemorates the 80th anniversary of the Berlin Olympics.
“As we enter the 2016 Olympic year, we wanted to remind the public of what can happen when sport is subverted for political reasons and why race and religion should never be a reason to exclude someone from sport,” said Jan Todd, director of the Stark Center for Physical Culture and Sports at the stadium.
Berlin was selected for the 1936 Olympic Games prior to Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in 1933. Hitler originally eschewed the idea of hosting the games but soon realized the competition could be exploited for propaganda purposes, as the exhibit recounts.