Heil Hitler! Heil Hitler!
Heil Hitler!
I don't forgive Germany what they did.
Never, never, never forget.
I don't think anybody who went through this
forgot and forgave.
I could have won this thing.
And they wouldn't let me compete.
I could have won,
but I didn't.
(FOUL PLAY)
(THE MARGARET LAMBERT STORY)
In 1936, Margaret Bergmann was the best female high jumper
in Germany. The reigning national champion.
The winner of the Olympic trials.
Margaret Lambert, she was born Gretel Bergmann in Germany.
She was a world-class high jumper.
She was one of the most gifted German athletes.
She had the German record
with 1 metre 60 in high jump.
She was athletic pretty much from childhood.
She became a competitive athlete while in her teens.
She equalled or bettered
the German high jump record
when she was just 16.
Really, honestly, was probably
one of the few Jews, in Germany, anyway,
who could qualify for the German Olympic team.
She was one of the medal hopes
of Germany for the 1936 Olympic Games.
Of course, when she was 16, the Nazis hadn't taken power yet.
And when that happened in 1933,
everything changed quite radically.
The odds she was up against
as a Jewish athlete in Nazi Germany - quite a story.
And here I am.
200...
How old am I?
You're not two hundred yet. 102!
- 202. - No, 102!
102.
And it didn't kill me.
The political climate and the climate in the society
of course was very, very difficult.
It was the time of the Nazi regime.
(IN TRUE COMRADESHIP,
(THE MOVEMENT PARTICULARLY WELCOMES THE ARMY,
(WHICH IS NOW UNDER THE FUHRER'S ORDERS.
(YOU ARE GERMANY.
(WHEN YOU ACT, THE NATION ACTS.)
After Hitler took power, there was a period of time
when Nazi terror ruled.
(HEIL, WORKMEN!
(HEIL, MY FUHRER!)
The big thing was the passage in September of 1935
of Nuremberg racial laws.
And German Jews were really
demoted to second-class citizens.
What is very distinctive about Nazi Germany is
that this is coming, not only in individual communities
at the grassroots, but you're seeing it from the very top.
It's official, state-supported, state-developed policies.
Everybody knows that people
that belonged to the Jewish community
were followed by the Nazi regimes,
they were threatened by death,
and so were Jewish sportsmen and women.
German Jewish athletes were
basically kicked out of their sports.
So what happened is that you had an exodus
of certain athletes.
There the history of Gretel Bergmann began.
This was a time when Hitler had promoted
his idea of fighting the Jews.
And Margaret was a very good athlete
and she was, as those who know her,
a very good personality.
But she was a Jew.
(A PEOPLE WHICH DOES NOT HOLD WITH THE PURITY OF ITS RACE
(WILL PERISH!)
Barred from competing, my mother
went to England to compete.
Yes, I went to England,
because I couldn't do anything in Germany.
Got to be a big shot there.
She was a English champion. She even improved
the German record or the record in England.
They all liked me and...
So, life wasn't that bad in England,
but we knew it couldn't last.
The 1936 Olympics were, of course, very controversial.
They are sometimes referred to,
and legitimately, as the Nazi Olympics.
Hitler was very assiduous about getting these Olympics because
it would show, he felt, Germany in a very good light.
And so, among other things they did was try to clean up
whatever anti-Semitism that they had,
and everything seemed to be like a normal country, like a
normal sophisticated country.
But it was clear to a lot of people what Hitler was about,
and what Germany was about - utter discrimination.
The Games were misused by the Nazi regime
for propaganda, of course.
We often find things like that,
that those regimes try to misuse
big international events for their own ideas.
And the same happened, of course, in Germany.
Initially, the Nazi regime itself was very sceptical
about whether they wanted to host these games.
You know, the regime and Hitler himself, I think,
became convinced, with the help of people like Joseph Goebbels,
who is the minister of propaganda,
that this was a propaganda opportunity
that could not be passed up.
(MAY THE BRIGHT FLAME OF OUR ENTHUSIASM
(NEVER BE EXTINGUISHED.
(IT ALONE GIVES US THE CREATIVE ART
(OF MODERN POLITICAL PROPAGANDA ITS LIGHT AND WARMTH.)
When we had the Berlin '36 Olympic Games,
they were created and they were given to Germany at a time
where they had a democratic system, but they were...
they were held when the system was turned over.
They were all organised to the benefit
of the Third Reich of the Nazi system.
It became quite clear that the Nazis wanted to make
the Berlin Olympics a showcase for their philosophy
for their ideas about Aryan superiority.
There was a significant movement in the United States,
and you also find it in other Western countries,
to boycott the Berlin Olympics.
Well, this sort of traces
the progression of my mother's story.
There were very progressive forces
that were pushing for the boycott.
An editorial from the New York Post
advocating a boycott of the Olympics in Berlin.
(OLYMPIC IDEALS OF SPORTSMANSHIP
& INTERNATIONAL GOODWILL)
(INTOLERANCE AND DISCRIMINATION)
The Nazis, faced with the threat of either
an Olympic boycott or the Olympics being cancelled,
had to do something to convince the world community
that they were worthy of holding the Olympics,
and they developed a rather elaborate charade
of inclusion of Jewish athletes.
The United States had threatened not to take part
in the Olympics
if Germany would not allow Jewish people to take part.
That was the threat.
Margaret, she was living in England.
She was told that if she didn't come back
and try out for the German women's high jump team,
that the German government
would cause problems for her parents.
She didn't really want to return to Germany
under those conditions but...
The Germans made me come back
because I was the only one
who was able
to compete in the Olympics.
The token Jew.
A token Jew.
She really had no choice but to return and was reinstated
to the German national team.
I think most scholars agree
that it was a little bit of a set-up.
As soon as the American team sailed for Germany,
my mother was promptly sent a letter,
lamenting the inconsistency of her performance
and dismissing her from the German Olympic team
with a nice "Heil Hitler" at the bottom.
The Germans could say,
"We tried to get a Jew to participate for Germany,
but she just wasn't good enough."
I mean, I'm sure that it was always intended for show
and they just never, ever intended
that she would be on that team.
They didn't just fake her out, they faked the whole world out.
They used her.
It was incredibly, elaborately contrived.
Well, there are some stories about the relationship between
a young woman called Dora Ratjen and Gretel Bergmann.
Dora Ratjen was found by the Nazi regime
just in order to kick Gretel off the team.
Ohh...
Well, my roommate, Dora Ratjen, was a very interesting person.
My mother's always told me that
she had quite a cordial relationship with Dora.
Even though she had, if not suspicions,
some confusion about just who Dora was.
Dora was very secretive.
Dora was given a separate room in which to shower and dress.
I finally figured out what was going on.
It was discovered that Dora Ratjen
was really Hermann Ratjen.
That she was, or he was, a man.
But you never saw Dora's...
I never saw her naked.
And she went on to compete.
Dora Ratjen, Deutschland.
There's been so much speculation
about whether Dora was a man
or Dora was gender ambiguous,
but the fact is, the Germans knew.
Basically, a lot of historians believe that the Germans,
you know, sacrificed the opportunity for a medal,
and very possibly a gold medal,
by not allowing Gretel Bergmann to compete for them.
There was nothing worse Hitler and his people could imagine
but a German athlete of Jewish belief
winning a gold medal for Germany.
This was not allowed to happen.
All I know is, I could've won,
and they wouldn't let me compete, so...
But they were hoping that Dora would win.
Oh, yes.
Who didn't win.
Dora didn't win, no.
Well, I think Gretel was as disappointed as you can be
after finding out what has happened to you.
She started making plans
to get out of Germany pretty much immediately.
She had no sports future in Germany. They didn't want her.
America in the 1930s,
it was really the height of anti-Semitism in the US
as well.
When Gretel Bergmann, you know, arrived in the United States,
she really wanted to break with Germany.
I think she became Margaret rather than Gretel.
She stopped speaking German
and she learned English as quickly as she could.
And you stopped speaking German.
German was not spoken in the house when I was growing up.
She really became an American.
She assimilated almost instantly.
So what happens when a lot of the German Jews,
many of whom are quite well educated, arrive in the US?
They have minimal English language skills,
of course - typical immigrant story -
so often they kind of have to start at a lower rung.
But the thing about Margaret was she came and she competed
in the high jump in the US.
If there was an Olympics Games in 1940,
Margaret would have been on the American team.
She was then, still,
the greatest woman high jumper in the world.
And I started competing here, and I did very well.
And I won the American championship.
She won the national women's championship in the high jump
before she retired to start a family, I think.
No, no, no, no. That's your husband. Here, can I get up?
That's my husband after he came over. A year after.
I came over, he came over.
And we got married pretty fast.
He was a good-looking guy!
My mother and father actually met in Germany.
They did not immediately commence a relationship
but they became friendly.
And then she had an occasion to meet my father in Frankfurt.
She said the moment he stepped off the train
in Frankfurt and they saw each other, something happened.
I met him and we fell in love immediately.
He was the best!
The very best person.
Her husband was Bruno Lambert. He was a doctor.
He was an internist.
And on the very day that he became an American citizen,
he went to the induction office and became a medical doctor
in the United States army.
Bruno, such an open-minded personality,
such a funny, nice man.
I admired this couple.
They were a couple of such a... such a spirit.
I see that...
that Bruno was really, really the highlight of her life.
When did he die? Two years ago?
Almost three, 2013, at the age of 103.
And you remember how long you were married?
40-odd years.
- 75 years. - Huh?!
75 years.
- 75 years? - Yeah.
That's how I got my grey hair.
Absolutely.
My parents always talked of the irony
of them owing their lives,
their marriage, their life together to Adolf Hitler.
The fact that she came here
and she made a great life for herself,
my father made a great life for himself
and his children in America,
is certainly the silver lining and maybe the best revenge.
This is an article that I did for the New York Times
prior to the Atlanta Olympics
that were going to be several weeks later.
Titled, "An Olympic Invitation Comes 60 Years Late."
The story starts,
"The envelope was postmarked Frankfurt, Germany.
The letter to Margaret Bergmann-Lambert, 82,
was written in English
under the letterhead of Walter Troger, President.
"It is my honour and pleasure to inform you,"
the letter began,
"that the National Olympic Committee for Germany
has decided to invite you to be our guest of honour
during the Olympic Centennial Games in Atlanta."
Who invited you?
To Atlanta?
I was invited?
Yes, but who? Do you remember who invited you?
No.
It was the German Olympic Committee.
Big shot.
Big shot!
I had sent a letter to her, which read,
"Dear Margaret Lambert,
I just learned about your fate and a lot what
you have suffered and what you have done."
So I invited her as my guest,
as a guest of National Olympic Committee,
together with her husband
to come to Atlanta to visit the Games.
All right, for the moment, that's it from Olympic Stadium.
Now back to Bob Costas.
OK. Among those in attendance tonight
for the women's high jump competition
is Margaret Bergmann,
once a national champion in this event.
She was at first reluctant
because she harboured this resentment,
understandable resentment, about Germany.
And then she thought about it, and she said,
"I can't continue to resent Germany
because it's a new generation."
For her, it was a sign - Germany gives me the respect
they didn't give me in former times.
That sparked this sort of worldwide awareness of her.
Ira Berkow of the New York Times saw her speak at an event
on Long Island and decided he just had to interview her.
So the story ran on A1 Sunday New York Times front page.
Not the front page of the sports section,
but the front page of the paper.
And the next day, the phone would not stop ringing.
After that gesture from the German Olympic Committee
in 1996, she decided
she cannot hold subsequent generations responsible.
So, in 1999, she came to Germany.
This is the result of my work
over 70 years from many organisations and so on.
The book which Gretel Bergmann wrote,
and which I had the pleasure to make the foreword.
That's one of our meetings, myself and that's Margaret,
and that's the christening of, what you say,
of the way after her name in Berlin,
near the Olympic Stadium.
The street right by the Olympic Stadium in Berlin,
which I think was formerly named after a Nazi
is now Gretel Bergmann Weg.
And this has been an ongoing process of reconciliation
and the growing of true friendships
with many, many people in Germany.
I think "reconciliation" is a very good word.
It's very hard to forget and forgive.
Well, forgiving is a difficult expression.
My personal feeling is she did not forgive
and she can't forgive what has happened to her.
But I'm convinced that she knows that today's Germany
is a different Germany.
She made the difference between the old Germany,
she cannot forgive the old Germany and those people
who were in charge of that,
and the new Germany who changed their system.
Germany today is a much different country and society
than it was, and there have been educational efforts
and many memorialisation efforts in Germany
in many places.
It's important for young people to know about Margaret's story
cos they can learn a lot. The after-war generation
of course had to learn from the terrible experiences
of the generations before.
I don't hold it against the people who have
shown me that they are not anti-Semitic any more.
I did enough with my life.
I did all of the physical stuff that I was able to do.
Not bad for an old lady.
I've learned from Margaret and from Bruno that you can be hurt
and that you can overcome that.
You can even enjoy your life
together with those people who are really friends with you.
She is such an impressive lady. Don't forget how old she is
and she is so, so open-minded.
She's a remarkable person.
And she really is a model
in so many ways for us, I mean, she has such a positive spirit.
I think of her as a woman with spine.
Being a world-class athlete
also gave her confidence and a strength.
She knew who she was.
I think of a great woman and a great friend.
She's hilarious, she's a very funny person.
She never lost her sense of humour.
One of the things I admire most about her is,
she doesn't see herself as a victim.
She continues to stand up for victims.
She really hates injustice of all kinds
and I think my mom knows this already,
but she's my hero.
She and my dad are both my heroes.
The greatest heroes I could possibly imagine
were always under this roof.
I'm proud that I was able to show the Nazi Germans
what a Jew could do.
It was quite a story.
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