Although some Jews chose to boycott the 1936 Olympics, others chose to participate, in part in an effort to disprove Nazi racism. Irving "Toots" Meretsky was born in Windsor, Ontario. From 1935 to 1936, he played basketball for the Windsor Ford V8s, who became Canada's Senior Men’s Champions and the Canadian representatives for the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

Meretsky was the leading scorer in the championship tournament and one of the star players of the Canadian Olympic basketball team. Canada was a basketball powerhouse at the time and the game was a medal sport for the first time in 1936.

Nothing was going to keep Meretsky from the Olympics, including the fact that he was the only Jewish member of a team bound for Hitler's Germany. He ventured into Jewish neighborhoods in Berlin and noted: “No one was on the streets, and the shades were drawn. I knocked at a few doors and was finally let in. It was obvious they were all scared.”