Margaret Bergmann Lambert - Jewish Athlete banned from 1936 Olympics
A tale of discrimination and oppressive government.
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00:00Among those in attendance tonight for the women's high jump competition is Margaret Bergman,
00:05once a national champion in this event, but at her prime in a country being taught to hate,
00:10her athletic credentials were made irrelevant.
00:16It was the Olympic summer of 60 years ago, an uncertain time.
00:21A young German athlete awaited word of her fate.
00:25I sat there every day waiting for some kind of notification.
00:29Am I in? Am I out?
00:31The letter came dated on the 16th of July.
00:35They told me on that day that according to your recent performances,
00:40I'm sure you did not figure on being a member of the team
00:44because you were too inconsistent or you weren't good enough or whatever.
00:48And Heil Hitler. That was it.
00:53Inconsistent? Hardly.
00:55In 1936, Margaret Bergman was the best female high jumper in Germany,
00:59the reigning national champion, the winner of the Olympic trials.
01:05But Bergman was also Jewish,
01:07in a society that was swiftly moving from synagogue burnings to Holocaust.
01:12The Olympics were to be a showcase for Aryan supremacy, not Jews.
01:17I think the main reason why I was so upset was that I wanted to show what a Jew could do.
01:23At that point.
01:26I think sports at that point was furthest from my mind.
01:29It was like a revenge.
01:32That I wanted to embarrass Hitler.
01:35I wanted to embarrass the whole Nazi gang.
01:38And I think that was my main motivation.
01:40And of course, after I got the letter, I felt horribly cheated.
01:44And I still feel cheated to this day.
01:49Hitler's Olympics went on without her.
01:52Bergman has no memory of a high jump competition she might have won,
01:56nor of the rest of the games.
01:58What she does remember is the fear Jews felt in the months that followed,
02:02and how old friends shunned her in the streets.
02:05Within a year, she'd fled Germany.
02:11The day I left Germany,
02:13I saw my mother, my father, on the platform of the train.
02:17I was looking out the window.
02:19I had a brother, 12 years old.
02:21He was running around, hiding, crying, screaming.
02:27Why do I have to lose everybody that I love so much?
02:31And we all tried not to break down,
02:35because we were so sure there were a bunch of Nazis standing around
02:38being happy that a Jewish family was suffering.
02:41So we all tried, except my brother, of course.
02:44We tried to keep our composure.
02:46But at that moment, I swore to myself
02:48I would never set foot on German soil again.
02:51And I kept that.
02:56Bergman moved to New York, where she has lived since.
02:59In Germany, her story was all but forgotten.
03:04Then in 1995, the mayor of Laufheim dedicated a school in her name.
03:09Though she refused to break her vow and return for the ceremony,
03:13she was moved by the gesture.
03:15A second offer followed, and for the past two weeks,
03:18she and her husband have been in Atlanta
03:20as official guests of the German delegation,
03:22which has treated her like a dignitary.
03:26Sixty years later, at age 82,
03:28Bergman finally has Olympic memories
03:34and the chance to heal a lingering wound.
03:40In 1936, Bergman jumped 5 feet, 3 inches,
03:44which, as it turned out, was the gold medal winning height
03:47at the Berlin Games.
03:49The women's world high jump record 60 years later
03:52is 6 feet, 10 inches.
03:54More high jump to come, but the women's 1500 is next
03:57when we come back to Atlanta.
03:59The women's 1500 is next when we come back to Atlanta.