Timeline: Political Events at the Olympic Games. Submit: Inbal Cohen, Tali Sankar and Stefani Velunsy. by סטפני וליונסקי

Berlin 1936: The Nazi Olympics

stefivel11 — 2024-02-28 19:37:41 UTC

The 1936 Summer Olympic Games were held in Berlin For two weeks ,At that time, Hitler was the leader and he ruled Germany with anti-democratic and anti-Jewish policies.

The Nazis' use the Olympic Games for propaganda purposes, to promote their ideology and to create an image completely different from the reality, an image in which Germany is united and peaceful. During the two weeks of the Olympics Hitler stops the anti-Jewish activity and evil towards the Jews' ,he didn't want the world to know what was really happening in Germany , he removed signs forbidding Jews from entering public places and every sign that shows that there is a discriminatory attitude towards Jews. As part of the Nazi policy, the Jews were excluded from German sports, but in the Olympics the Nazis didn't want to be noticed that Jews were not participating so they allowed the star fencer "Helen Mayer" to participate and represent Germany even though the Nazis saw her as Jewish because her father was Jew.

The harsh attitude of the Nazis to the Jews that violates the human rights, Jews, Jews athletes and people in the United States and Europe called for a boycott the Olympics in Berlin.

In addition, at the Berlin Olympics, the tradition of opening the Olympics with a torch race begging.

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-nazi-olympics-berlin-1936?series=22

London 1948: Germany & Japan were band from the games

stefivel11 — 2024-02-28 19:41:40 UTC

In 1948, 3 years after WW2 ended, Britain faced a big economic crisis, particularly in London. The crisis was all across Europe, yet Britain was in the best finance situation out of all – so they were chosen to host the Olympic. This Olympic got the nickname: "The austerity Olympics" due to how cheap they had to be. This was the first Olympic games since the Nazi Olympic in Berlin in 1936. At the time London was still recovering from the "blitz" and was in debts. A program to help recover Britain economy was decided on a month before the start of the games. The finance situation led to them cutting short on stuff that they can't afford, for example: they drag tested only the winners of the category, couldn’t serve any meat that wasn’t whale, there was no Olympic center for the athletes to sleep in and more. Germany and Japan got banned from the games. Both of them were still considered to be an enemy because they didn’t sign the peace agreement at the end of the war. Despite all the challenges, the London Olympic is considered to be a great success. It was the start of London to financially recover (they had a profit of almost £30,000), and was a much needed professional sporting event for both athletes and the viewers after the long war.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2012/mar/30/london-1948-olympics-austerity-games

Moscow 1980: The United States imposes a boycott.

stefivel11 — 2024-02-28 19:42:52 UTC

In December 1979 the Soviet Union had invaded to Afghanistan. This invasion led to the biggest boycott in the history of the Olympic. The boycott was proposed by the US president Jimmy Carter. The boycott was a big success as the USA led to 60 countries to not participate as well. Among those countries were: Israel, Japan, Iran, Argentina, China, Qatar and dozens more. Despite the boycott there were 81 other countries that did attend the games (which is about 5,000 athletes). During the games there was a lot of protest against the invasion all over the world and some of the participating countries chose to not show up in the opening ceremony, and when some of them medals they decided to play the Olympic anthem instead of their country one. The games didn’t go as a properly as they should as there was a lot cheating, not appropriate behavior, and security issues which led to the result of certain categories being changed. The boycott caused the level of the competition to go down. At this Olympic the record for most domination of a country was broken by the Soviet team. The record holder before was the US in ST. Louis in 1904. The Soviet team won 195 medals overall and out of the 195, 80 were gold medals.
https://www.britannica.com/event/Moscow-1980-Olympic-Games

Munich 1972: Munich Massacre

stefivel11 — 2024-02-28 22:57:47 UTC

The Munich Games marked the first return of the Olympics to a German city since the 1936 Games in Berlin. (Hitler used the Olympics as a platform to spread the nazi ideology)

in the 1972 games(05.09-06.09) a terrorists organization named "black September" sneaked into the Olympic village and 8 terrorists killed two members of the Israeli team and took nine people as hostages, they were attempting to bargain for the release of 230 Palestinian (arabs)prisoners that were held in Israeli jails. in exchange for the hostages. the German police failed at capturing the terrorists, and as a response the terrorists killed the hostages and then the police killed five of the eight Palestinian terrorists, one officer from the German police force was killed.as a memorial the Olympic competition was suspended for 24 hours in order to hold memorial services for the athletes that were killed.

https://www.britannica.com/list/7-significant-political-events-at-the-olympic-games

video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVzDVsUjRsw

Mexico 1968: Brutal shooting and Civil Rights Protest

stefivel11 — 2024-02-28 23:00:06 UTC

The 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City were the 16th occurrence of the modern Olympic Games. At that time two political main events took place:

The first one was Mexican student movement-Just days before the Games, Mexican students protested the government’s allocation of funds for the Olympics instead of using them for social programs. A tragic thing happened, the army surrounded the student in the Plaza of Three Cultures, resulting in over 200 deaths and thousands injured.

The other main event was a athlete political statement on the podium-During the medal ceremony for the men’s 200-meter race, American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos made a powerful statement. They raised their black-gloved fists and wore black socks to symbolize civil rights and protest the living conditions of minorities in the United States. The IOC banned both athletes from the Olympic Village and sent them home.

https://www.britannica.com/event/Mexico-City-1968-Olympic-Games

Reflection

inbalc2016 — 2024-02-29 10:58:57 UTC

This topic should be researched because it is one of the biggest sporting events all over the world and one of the world most important one.

This topic is significant for research because it has developed over thousands of years. The Olympic first started in ancient Greece and got a lot of changes during the years.

The personal position for choosing this topic because it is because we enjoy watching sports ,each of us doing an sport activity in our free time plus we got interested especially in political event because we related to 2 of the events we talks about.

the reason we choose the topic is because we feel those events have impact in our time too

I expect to find out what’s really happened behind every event plus we want to see if there is something interesting and related for our people, Jewish people, Israelis, or matters that are important to talk about and bring up.