THE OLYMPIC SHAMES

Leading up to the 1936 Olympics, Hitler’s government re-opened a number of gay bars and cafés in Berlin as part of a broader campaign to conceal Nazi violence and hateful rhetoric.

At the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, what will Putin do?

The world was watching as Nazi Germany prepared for the 1936 Summer Olympics. Activists, politicians, and organizations around the globe called for a boycott. The Jewish community in Germany and abroad hoped the Games would draw attention to Nazi antisemitism (the anti-Jewish Nuremberg Laws had been passed just months earlier).

Intending to impress and dazzle the world, in the weeks before the opening ceremony, Hitler ordered the “clean up” of Berlin.

The Nazi government removed and relocated Berlin residents they deemed undesirable. Roma and Sinti people were evicted and transferred to Nazi “Gypsy” encampments on the outskirts of the city with the false promise that they could return to their homes once the Olympics were over.

At the same time, mindful of public opinion and mounting international criticism, the Nazi government temporarily relaxed its oppressive policies and actions against certain racial and social minorities. Nazi rhetoric was tempered. Anti-Jewish signs and pervasive antisemitic propaganda were hidden from sight. Gay bars and cafés that the Nazis had shut down were re-opened. Foreign homosexuals were not arrested.

For the two weeks of the 1936 Olympiad, the Nazi capital resembled elements of the open, tolerant, vibrant Berlin of the late 1920s.

Learning from history isn’t easy.

Before the 2004 Athens Olympics, the Greek government evicted some 2,700 Roma from their homes and created a housing crisis that continues to this day. These evictions were mostly ignored by the international press.

In the months leading up to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, the Chinese government removed and relocated hundreds of thousands of people living in poverty, people who were homeless, people involved in the sex trade, and other people deemed undesirable. The world watched the spectacular Beijing opening ceremony, mostly oblivious or indifferent to China’s human rights abuses.

Again and again, governments with shameful human rights records have been awarded the honor of hosting the Olympics. Each time, discrimination and violence is overlooked or excused. Giving an oppressive regime the opportunity to host the Games could lead to improvements for human rights, we tell ourselves.

And now, with the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi in southwestern Russia just months away, Putin’s government has passed an outrageous law that makes it possible for police to arrest and jail anyone—Russian citizens, foreign tourists, Olympic athletes—who voices support for the rights of gay and lesbian people. A senior public official has gone as far as calling for gay people to be banned from organ donation: “Their hearts, in case of the automobile accident, should be buried in the ground or burned as unsuitable for the continuation of life.”

There are reports of a recent increase in government-sanctioned violence against gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in Russia (or at least an increase in media attention), leading to calls for LGBT-friendly countries to grant asylum to Russian victims and targets of homophobic and transphobic violence.

News organizations, bloggers, and activists have compared Russia’s new anti-gay laws with the anti-Jewish and anti-homosexual laws of Nazi Germany, citing parallels between the Nazi-hosted Olympics of 1936 and the upcoming Sochi Winter Games. Just as the Nazi Games raised questions about the participation of athletes of Jewish or African descent (a number of Jewish and Black sportspeople competed and won medals in Berlin), LGBT athletes and LGBT spectators at the 2014 Games could face harassment, arrest, and imprisonment.

Activists are calling for a boycott of Putin’s Olympics. Boycotts of Russian products have begun (gay bars in Chicago and New York have stopped buying and serving Russian vodka, for example). And there are calls for public protests, to be led by Games participants and medal winners, that would dare Russian police to arrest and jail Olympic athletes.

When President Obama cancelled his recent meeting with President Putin, although he made clear his opposition to the idea of a boycott, he took the opportunity to speak out in support of LGBT athletes and against Russia’s homophobic legislation.

When the Berlin Olympics of 1936 came to an end, Nazi Germany returned to business as usual. The gay bars and cafés were boarded up again. The Nazi roundup, deportation, torture, and killing of homosexual men resumed. Later, the Roma prisoners of the Nazi “Gypsy” encampments were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau and elsewhere. The regime’s discriminatory anti-Jewish laws accelerated into meticulously planned and implemented genocide.

In the coming months, even if Putin tones down his anti-gay rhetoric, even if he softens legal restrictions and threats of arrests over the duration of the Games, there’s a good chance that the persecution of LGBT Russians will return in full force once the Olympic athletes and media have returned home.

We cannot be silent. Every person who chooses to participate in the Sochi Games—as an athlete, as a vendor, or as a spectator, including those watching from home—must do something that draws attention to the plight of LGBTs in Russia. The international community, particularly each country that has pledged to protect the rights of LGBT people, has a responsibility to voice its objection to Putin’s anti-gay legislation in the strongest possible way.