Sometimes the introduction to an historical event is better done with a smaller issue within the broader, chronological overview most museum exhibitions use. They help us forge a connection between our own familiar experiences and the vast unknowns of events we may not have been around to experience.

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s newest special exhibition, The Nazi Olympics: Berlin 1936, serves as an alternative and compelling introduction into Holocaust studies. By going in-depth into just one event during Hilter's Germany, it provides an absorbing perspective on the Third Reich and its machinations six years before initiating the "Final Solution." And by discussing an athletic event, the exhibition revolves around a common and internationally recognizable subject, at a particularly good time.

Half of the exhibition regards the controversies and issues that surrounded the athletic world just before the Olympics, including a discussion on the Nazification of German sports and how some athletic clubs excluded non-Aryans. There is also an intriguing section about the intense debates between various organizations and demographics who advocated or argued against boycotting the games.

Photo courtesy of USHMM, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Md.

The exhibition focuses on African-American involvement with the Games as much as it does on the Jewish athletes -- also noting the irony of Jesse Owens' and other African-Americans' success in Berlin (10 medalists) alongside the United States’ failure to recognize discrimination at home.

The space that features the main section on the Games is round and almost coliseum-like, with photographs of the athletes on one of the walls. It induces a combination of sadness and amazement, this juxtaposition of something as quaint, healthy, and entertaining as the javelin toss alongside descriptions of the aggressive reoccupation of the Rhineland or how 800 gypsies were sent to Marzahn camp in an effort to “cleanup” Berlin before the Games.

The videos on display, with their images of enthusiastic crowds and Wagnerian musical accompaniment, add to the feeling that this was a truly impressive event: not just the organization and excitement that comes with any Olympic Games, but the façade that Hitler and others were able to pull off—and how naïve and foolish the world was to allow Hitler such a propaganda coup.

Ending with personal stories from the Olympics and a wall of athletes who were killed in the Holocaust, the exhibition concludes poignantly. The micro-study of the Third Reich through the 1936 Olympics is reconnected to the broader context of the Holocaust, and we are reminded of the macabre context.

The Nazi Olympics: Berlin 1936 runs through August 17. No passes are needed. The Museum is located at 100 Raoul Wallenberg Place, SW; see web site for hours.