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Parallels To The Nazi Olympics?

While it's not explicitly pegged to the Beijing Olympics, the Holocaust Museum's special exhibition on the 1936 Nazi Olympics--running until August 24--is timed evocatively enough that's impossible to avoid comparison. From the online exhibition:

Minimizing its antisemitic agenda and plans for territorial expansion, the regime exploited the Games to impress 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 contemporary observers claimed might have restrained Hitler and bolstered international resistance to Nazi tyranny. After the Olympics, Germany's expansionism and the persecution of Jews and other "enemies of the state" accelerated, culminating in World War II and the Holocaust.

It's an interesting choice on the museum's part. Take a look.

--Barron YoungSmith