Berlin's Olympiastadion in 1936 (picture by Wikipedia)

Inauguration of exhibition European sport against Nazism. From Berlin Olympics to the London Games (1936-1948) at the Museo diffuso della Resistenza in Turin, on Wednesday 6 November at 11 a.m.

The exhibit, organized by Paris Mémorial de la Shoah and promoted by the Resistance and Constitution Committee of the Piedmont Regional Council, under the patronage of the Jewish community of Turin, tells about the history of sport in Europe in the Thirties and Fourties through video, photographs, objects and original documents. 

The exhibit retraced the biographies of some sportsmen whose career was upset by the rise of Nazifascism. They include the coaches of Alessandria and Novara Árpád Weisz and of Turin Ernest Erbstein.

Among these figures there are outstanding examples of courage, disobeyance and resistance. First of all Gino Bartali, who was recognized as Righteous among the Nations in September for rescuing 800 Jews by providing them with forged documents - which the champion transported in his bycicle.

Besides Bartali the exhibit remembers alpinist Gino Soldà, well known for taking part in the expedition for the conquest of K2. Soldà had achieved his first feat at age 17, when he climbed the east wall of the Baffelan in the group of the Small Dolomites, which was near his chilldhood house. During WW2 he kept on working as an alpine guide at the Locatelli refuge at the Three Peaks of Lavaredo, but after 8 September, the date when the news of the armistice between Italy and the US was released and Italians became enemies of Germany, he decided to join the struggle of the partisan fighters. This is when, risking his life, he helped Rinaldo Arnaldi and Torquato Fraccon rescue hundreds persecuted Jews by bringing them into safety in Switzerland through the mountains.

The exhibition will last until 8 December 2013.