Lynn Herzeg: The troubling trend of museums whitewashing Jewish history

Pages from a scrapbook of memorabilia from the 1976 Montreal Olympics collected by author Lynn Herzeg. Photo by Courtesy Lynn Herzeg

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Thinking back to the summer of 1976 elicits a wave of memories that have nothing at all to do with reaching the adolescent milestone of making out with my first boyfriend. Rather, what I remember so nostalgically about that summer is the feeling of excitement as Montreal — my city! — hosted the Olympic Games.

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Throughout the previous school year, lessons had been crafted around Olympics content. I still remember learning the Games’ motto, “Citius, Altius, Fortius.” which remains the extent of my knowledge of Latin. Fifty years later, I still have my official Olympic photo albums, in which I carefully arranged programs, ticket stubs and blurry Kodak Instamatic photos of the events I attended.

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It’s these memories that led me online to view the McCord Stewart Museum’s virtual exhibition commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Montreal Olympics, “Beyond the Games: Montreal’s Olympic Story.” Funded by Digital Museums Canada, which is managed by the Canadian Museum of History, a federal Crown corporation, this virtual exhibition is “designed for youth aged 12 to 17” and “offers a unique opportunity to pass down memories, stories and knowledge from one generation to the next.”

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The exhibition is a delightful trip down memory lane. For me, the highlight was an interview with a jovial senior, seated next to his oh-so-’70s polyester Olympics uniform on a mannequin, reminiscing about his unforgettable teenage experience working as a stadium host.

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The exhibition tells the Montreal Olympics story, warts and all, including the rampant corruption, skyrocketing costs, construction strikes and the mayor’s “Olympic clean-up campaign” that saw the arrest of some 200 gay Montrealers.

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Nor does it shy away from controversies related to foreign conflicts. Over a full page, it describes in intricate detail two political issues at the Games: that 32 countries, mostly African states, boycotted the Games due to the presence of New Zealand, whose rugby team had toured South Africa, which had been banned from the Olympics since 1964 because of apartheid; and that Canada, because it had officially recognized the People’s Republic of China, refused to allow Taiwan to compete under its usual name, Republic of China.

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But that degree of detail abruptly disappeared several pages later, when it came to the subject of security at the Games. The entire security operation was distilled into one vague sentence: “The tragedy that had occurred at the preceding 1972 Games in Munich led Montreal to implement extensive security measures; as a result, there were no incidents of violence.”

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No explanation of what that tragedy was: a Palestinian terrorist group called Black September murdered 11 members of the Israeli Olympic team.

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The online exhibition is an abridged version of the McCord’s onsite exhibition called, “Montreal 1976: An Olympic Feat,” which has been running since late March. In the museum version, the panel about security defines “the tragedy” to which the virtual version refers: “Munich 1972 marked Olympic history because of the terrorist attack that claimed the lives of 17 people and led to a 36-hour suspension of the Games.”

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No mention that 11 of those “people” were not random victims from random countries, but all Israelis, and that the only non-Israeli victim was a West German police officer. No specification that the remaining five people whose lives “were claimed” were not victims, but the terrorists themselves. This basic information appears in the first sentences of a Google search overview.