News Associate Editor
As we gathered last Tuesday night to hear the story of Holocaust resistance, and in some cases, lack thereof, several thoughts raced through my head. First, a program preaching tolerance to Jewish people is long overdue, as it is the first program that has even mentioned it since I entered Choate in the fall of 2003. Personal reservations aside, I feel it is necessary to acknowledge the fact that while a countless number of dollars and hours have been devoted to the education of this event both here in the United States and abroad, the legacy of this event still lives in a negative way.
The World Cup of Soccer is without a doubt the most anticipated and watched sporting event in the world; more than the Olympics and more than the Super Bowl. And this year, the United States will join 31 other nations in Germany, the country from which the Holocaust sprang, in an attempt to bring further athletic renown to their countries in a site that is not far, both by distance and symbols from this event.
Along with the protested Olympics of 1980, the 1936 Olympics were the most politically important Olympics ever. Held in Berlin, Germany on the eve of the Second World War, the 1936 Olympics were Hitler’s way of taking his racism into athletics. The Nazi regime valued athletics very highly and often felt that success in athletics led to success in the military. Uhe Olympic stadium in Berlin was the Führer’s shrine to that philosophy and his regime. One would think that a stadium built in 1936 upon the foundation of such terrible beliefs would not only be an afterthought as a venue for competition but actually be out of the question. If one were to think that, one would be wrong.
As the Germans debated as to which stadiums to rebuild or refurbish throughout the country, the Olympic Stadium of 1936 was a major issue. In the end, they decided to keep the stadium and refurbish it at a cost of $283 million, a figure that superceded the cost of knocking the stadium down and rebuilding it. In addition to its higher cost, the atmosphere, one soccer writer suggests, is not ideal for soccer games as the seats are separated from the field by a track. Thus, the Germans are spending more money to renew an antiquated stadium and, even when refurbished, a stadium with poor soccer atmosphere.
The Germans knew the historical, political, and social significance of this stadium, yet they chose to keep it. The clock-tower which symbolized the strength and brute force of the Third Reich still stands. Hitler’s viewing deck from which he viewed Jesse Owens, a black man, bring glory to the United States only months after he ordered that black people in Germany to be exterminated, still stands.
In a New York Times article and interview, Volkwin Marg, a Hamburg architect whose firm oversaw the $283 million project said,”You can’t overcome history by destroying it. We have to overcome our role in history by demonstrating it.”
I agree with him to a certain extent. It is imperative that the athletes and spectators in Germany know of what transpired in the past. But is that not possible with a new stadium? Knocking down the stadium would not be an attempt to erase history but rather to move forward. America has never tried to ignore its own period of political and social brutality, slavery. However, we have certainly not tried to take an icon of that society and modernize it.
As soccer fans from all around the world gather in Germany this June to support their teams in global domination of sport, they will be doing so in a competition venue that was built upon the belief of global domination by means of genocide. And when an excited fan raises his hand to cheer when his country scores a goal, he will be doing so in the same seat of a man who once raised his hand to “Heil Hitler.”
