It passed nearly 80 years since the Olympic Games were played in National Socialist Germany with Hitler in 1936. In this video, you will find out what exactly the National Socialist Racism was and what can be better to do this than the words of Jesse Owens and witnesses of the event in Berlin in 1936. The "Official" version of the facts says that Hitler was very upset when a black athlete won four gold medals, humiliating Hitler and "Nazi Germany," and for that reason, he left the stadium to avoid congratulating Owens. For at least three years, the international media was telling the world that Hitler and National Socialist Germany were racists, supremacists, and they despised all other peoples and races of the world. The media omitted the fact that Jesse Owens recounts his experience with Hitler and the Germans:
"You can melt down all the medals and cups I have, and they wouldn't be a plating on the 24-karat friendship I felt for Luz Long at that moment."
-Jesse Owens
Would Hitler feel really angry because Owens won four gold medals for the USA when National Socialist Germany was the big winner with more medals than totaling the US, UK, and France together? Owens was acclaimed by more than 110,000 people in the Olympic Stadium in Berlin, and later, many Berliners requested autographs to him when they saw him in the street. This would have been unheard of in any other country worldwide. During his stay in Germany, Owens was allowed to travel and stay in the same places as whites. That was ironic because blacks were not allowed to do this in the US because they did not have equal rights (even though they were citizens).
"The Black" was so dear to the German people that he did not just break after his first victory because he had to sign autographs everywhere. After the victory in the relay race, he was forced to change his accommodation to get away from the crowd of autograph seekers. Outside the house of Bautzen in the Olympic Village were waiting thousands.
"When I came back to my native country after all the stories (invented) about Hitler, I couldn't ride in the front of the bus. I had to go to the back door. I couldn't live where I wanted. I wasn't invited to the White House to shake hands with the President either."
-Jesse Owens, American Olympic champion in Germany in 1936 (The Jesse Owens Story, 1970).
"In Nazi Germany, they treated him as an equal," said William J. Baker, Owens biographer.
"It's hard to imagine how happy I feel from one moment to another, it seemed to me that while I ran, I had grown wings. All the Stadium was so festive, it was contagious, so I ran with greater joy, and to me, it seemed I had lost all weight off my body. The sportive enthusiasm of those German spectators made a deep impression on me, particularly the gentlemanly attitude of those spectators. You may tell everybody we are thankful for the German hospitality. When I passed, the Chancellor rose, greeted me with his hand, and I returned the signal. I think reporters were wrong to criticize the man of the hour in Germany."
-Jesse Owens in an interview to Tampa Tribune on April 1, 1980, before dying in the hospital of cancer.
