KANSAS CITY.- The Midwest Center for Holocaust Education will open the exhibit The Nazi Olympics Berlin 1936 through November 26. To mark the 70th anniversary of the Berlin Olympic Games, the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education, in cooperation with the American Jazz Museum and the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, proudly presents THE NAZI OLYMPICS Berlin 1936, an exhibition organized and circulated by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Through this exhibit's thought-provoking photographs, written documents, film footage, and athlete testimonies, explore how the Nazis subverted the true meaning of the Games. The exhibit recognizes the efforts of those who chose to boycott the Games as well as the accomplishments of medalists, including Jesse Owens and Mack Robinson (Jackie Robinson’s older brother).

For two weeks in August 1936, Adolf Hitler's Nazi dictatorship camouflaged its racist, militaristic character while hosting the Summer Olympics. 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. Having rejected a proposed boycott of the 1936 Olympics, the United States and other western democracies missed the opportunity to take a stand that--some observers at the time claimed--might have given Hitler pause and bolstered international resistance to Nazi tyranny. With the conclusion of the Games, Germany's expansionist policies and the persecution of Jews and other "enemies of the state" accelerated, culminating in World War II and the Holocaust.

On May 13, 1931, the International Olympic Committee, headed by Count Henri Baillet-Latour of Belgium, awarded the 1936 Summer Olympics to Berlin. The choice signaled Germany's return to the world community after defeat in World War I.

Two years later, Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany and quickly turned the nation's fragile democracy into a one-party dictatorship. Police rounded up thousands of political opponents, detaining them without trial in concentration camps. The Nazi regime also put into practice racial policies that aimed to "purify" and strengthen the Germanic "Aryan" population. A relentless campaign began to exclude Germany’s one-half million Jews from all aspects of German life.