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The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is courting controversy over a sold-out T-shirt on the official Olympics website depicting the 1936 Berlin Olympics run by the Nazis.
The limited-edition shirt features the poster for the 1936 Games designed by German artist Franz Würbel that was used as propaganda by Adolf Hitler to promote the Nazi idea of Aryan supremacy.
That idea was deflated by Black American Jesse Owens, who won four track and field gold medals at the games.
Liora Rez, founder of StopAntisemitism, called the move a “shame” on the IOC.
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The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is courting controversy over a sold-out T-shirt on the official Olympics website depicting the 1936 Berlin Olympics run by the Nazis. (Olympic Shop; Kevin Voigt/GettyImages)
“The Olympics have been a staging ground for antisemitism for decades,” Rez told Fox News Digital on Friday. “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 that earlier Friday an employee at the official Olympics 2026 store shouted “Free Palestine” to Israel fans at the Winter Olympics currently being held in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy.
“Possibly more disgraceful, on the official Olympic online shop as part of the ‘heritage collection,’ the IOC is selling T-shirts commemorating and reproducing imagery tied to the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, held under Adolf Hitler’s racist Nazi dictatorship. This is the heritage the IOC wants to celebrate?” she continued. “Shame on the International Olympic Committee for this latest outrage. No medals for this pathetic performance.”
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The IOC told several outlets that while they “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. Many of them stunned the world with their athletic achievements, including Jesse Owens.”
“The historical context of these Games is further explained at the Olympic Museum in Lausanne,” the committee continued. “For the 1936 edition, the number of T-shirts produced and sold by the IOC is limited, which is why they are currently sold out.”
Jesse Owens winning the 100 meters at the 1936 Olympics. (Keystone/Getty Images)
Fox News Digital has reached out to the IOC for comment.
The Berlin Games shirts are part of the IOC’s Heritage Collection, which features the design from every Olympic Games.
On the website it says the Heritage Collection “celebrates the art and design of the Olympic Games. Each edition of the Games reflects a unique time and place in history when the world came together to celebrate humanity.
Yoav Potash, director of the award-winning Holocaust documentary “Among Neighbors” called the t-shirt a “sickening affront to human decency.”
Adolf Hitler watching the Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936. (Fox Photos/Getty Images)
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“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 has the benefit of 90 years of hindsight here. We know that Nazi Germany used its role as the Olympic host for propaganda purposes, aiming to showcase supposed Aryan superiority.”
He added, “And we know that, within a few years of those games, Nazi Germany carried out a massive, industrialized genocide, killing millions of people in an effort to further the fantasy of Aryan superiority. To ignore all of that and sell t-shirts commemorating the 1936 Olympics in Berlin is a sickening affront to human decency and our collective ability to learn from history.”