Adolf Hitler’s Olympic showcase is stirring controversy nearly 90 years later.
The Olympics’ official online shop has sold out of a T-shirt featuring artwork from the 1936 Berlin Games, which Hitler used to promote Nazi Germany and its ideology of Aryan supremacy.
The shirt, part of the IOC’s “Heritage Collection,” reproduces the original 1936 poster by German artist Franz Würbel.
The design includes a laurel-crowned male figure, the Olympic rings and Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate.
German politicians and Jewish advocacy groups called for the item to be removed.
“The 1936 Olympic Games were a central propaganda tool of the Nazi regime,” Klara Schedlich, sports policy spokesperson for the Green Party faction in Berlin’s House of Representatives, told German press agency DPA.
She charged the International Olympic Committee with “clearly not reflecting sufficiently on its own history” and said “the choice of image is problematic and unsuitable for a T-shirt,” without context.
Liora Rez, founder of StopAntisemitism, called the sale a “shame.”
“The Olympics have been a staging ground for antisemitism for decades,” Rez told Fox News Digital.
“At the Munich games in 1972, when terrorists butchered the Israeli Olympic team, the competition barely paused. Even decades later the IOC refused to properly commemorate the massacre. And this year, the Jew-hate is official,” she added.
Yoav Potash, director of the Holocaust documentary “Among Neighbors,” described the shirt as a “sickening affront to human decency.”
“To say that the IOC’s sale of these shirts is in poor taste would be a gross understatement,” Potash told Fox News Digital.
The IOC said the shirt was sold out as part of a limited production run.
The Berlin design is part of the IOC’s Heritage Collection, which features artwork from every Olympic Games and, according to the website, “celebrates the art and design of the Olympic Games.”
The Post has reached out to the IOC for comment.
“While we of course acknowledge the historical issues of ‘Nazi propaganda’ related to the Berlin 1936 Olympic Games, we must also remember that the Games in Berlin saw 4,483 athletes from 49 countries compete in 149 medal events,” a spokesperson told the outlet.
“Many of them stunned the world with their athletic achievements, including Jesse Owens,” they added.
Owens, a Black American sprinter, won four gold medals in Berlin, dealing a blow to Nazi claims of Aryan supremacy.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: nypost.com
