The Nazis used the 1936 Olympics in Berlin as a huge propaganda platform with a wider audience than just its own population. The German athletes' success could be transmuted into the success of the Nazi government and socialism as a whole. The Nazis intentionally used the Olympics as a symbol of how great they were and how far their government had come. Anti-Semitic policies, part of the uglier side of Nazism, were hidden from the world's eyes. During the 1936 Olympics, there were no visible signs that said "No Jews or Dogs."
However, the American government actually displayed some anti-Semitism when it didn't let two Jewish American track runners compete for fear of offending Hitler. This is just one example of huge world powers' appeasement approach to the problem of Nazi Germany.
The American government (meaning President Roosevelt) also didn't accept the ship the Saint Louis, which carried Jewish refugees to Cuba, where they were rejected. They sailed north to the United States, thinking good old FDR would accept them. But he turned them away, fearing that whatever political capital with Congress he had left would be wasted on a mere few hundred Jewish refugees. I thought that was awful. These people were suffering incredibly horrible treatment in their home countries, and one of the world's greatest powers cannot muster the empathy and human compassion to save them.
This immediately reminded me of the Syrian refugee crisis. Some European countries are completely "shutting their borders," so to speak, and rejected refugees. They feel that they need to focus on their own country's problems instead of providing humanitarian relief to these refugees. Sometimes the lack of empathy is seriously astonishing, but when I learned about how Roosevelt turned away the Saint Louis, the reactions of European countries this past year only make sense because history does repeat itself.
However, the American government actually displayed some anti-Semitism when it didn't let two Jewish American track runners compete for fear of offending Hitler. This is just one example of huge world powers' appeasement approach to the problem of Nazi Germany.
The American government (meaning President Roosevelt) also didn't accept the ship the Saint Louis, which carried Jewish refugees to Cuba, where they were rejected. They sailed north to the United States, thinking good old FDR would accept them. But he turned them away, fearing that whatever political capital with Congress he had left would be wasted on a mere few hundred Jewish refugees. I thought that was awful. These people were suffering incredibly horrible treatment in their home countries, and one of the world's greatest powers cannot muster the empathy and human compassion to save them.
This immediately reminded me of the Syrian refugee crisis. Some European countries are completely "shutting their borders," so to speak, and rejected refugees. They feel that they need to focus on their own country's problems instead of providing humanitarian relief to these refugees. Sometimes the lack of empathy is seriously astonishing, but when I learned about how Roosevelt turned away the Saint Louis, the reactions of European countries this past year only make sense because history does repeat itself.
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