The International Olympic Committee is facing mounting backlash for selling a limited-edition T-shirt commemorating the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, held under the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler.

The $42 shirt, which sold out quickly on the official Olympics online store, features artwork based on an original 1936 poster showing the Olympic rings and a muscular figure crowned in laurels beside a chariot atop Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate. Jewish organizations and Holocaust scholars have condemned the item as historically insensitive, arguing that the Games were designed as a global propaganda showcase for Nazi Germany.

In a statement to media, an IOC spokesperson acknowledged the Games’ connection to Nazi propaganda but defended the product as part of a broader collection marking “130 years of Olympic art and design.” The IOC also cited the legacy of Jesse Owens, the Black American sprinter whose four gold medals in Berlin undercut Hitler’s “master race” ideology.

“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,” the spokesperson said, adding that Owens and others “stunned the world with their athletic achievements.”

European Jewish groups said the IOC’s framing minimizes how the Games were used to legitimize a regime already engaged in systematic persecution of Jews and other minorities.

“The Nazi regime used the 1936 Olympics to legitimize itself on the global stage while persecution of Jews was already well underway,” Scott Saunders, CEO of International March of the Living, told CNN. “Sport can unite and inspire, but it can also be manipulated to sanitize hatred and normalize exclusion.”

Christine Schmidt, co-director of the Wiener Holocaust Library in London, echoed those concerns.

“The Nazis used the 1936 Olympics to showcase their oppressive regime, while preventing almost all German-Jewish athletes from competing and concealing virulent antisemitic violence,” Schmidt said. “This history cannot be separated from the imagery now being commercialized.”

The shirt is based on artwork by graphic artist Werner Würbel and reflects the aesthetic promoted by Nazi propagandists, including filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, whose documentary “Olympia” glorified the Games and promoted Aryan racial ideals.

The controversy has been compounded by other items in the IOC’s “Heritage” collection. The organization also sold a T-shirt commemorating the 1936 Winter Olympics in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, featuring a poster by Ludwig Hohlwein, a prominent artist in Joseph Goebbels’ propaganda apparatus. The image shows a skier raising an arm in a gesture resembling a Nazi salute.

Another sold-out item features artwork from the 1972 Munich Olympics, where the Israeli team was taken hostage and murdered by the Palestinian terror group Black September. Jewish groups have questioned the decision to market that imagery without clearer contextualization.

The IOC has also faced criticism over past commemorative products, including sneakers released in 2024 by Adidas, a company founded by Nazi Party members, which only recently severed ties with Kanye West after his public antisemitic statements.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)