High jumper Gretel Bergmann had jump expunged from record books and was barred from Berlin games

This article is more than 10 years old

This article is more than 10 years old

Germany today honoured a high jumper expelled from the national team by the Nazis a month before the 1936 Berlin Olympics because she was Jewish.

Gretel Bergmann matched a German high jump record of 5ft 3in (1.60 metres) in Stuttgart on 30 June 1936. Two weeks later, her feat was expunged from the record books and she was kicked out of the team.

Now the German authorities are making amends to the 95-year-old, who emigrated to the US in 1937 and changed her name to Margaret Lambert.

The country's track and field association has restored her achievement to the record books, calling the decision an "act of justice and a symbolic gesture" but admitting it could "in no way make up" for the past. The association also requested that she be included in Germany sport's hall of fame.

"That's very nice and I appreciate it. I couldn't repeat the jump today, believe me," Lambert, who lives in the New York City borough of Queens, told the Associated Press.

Lambert was part of the German Olympic team from 1934 to 1936, but had gone to England to continue her education at the age of 19.

She won the 1934 British high jump championships and had hoped to compete for Britain. But the Nazis forced her to jump for Germany, threatening her family even though she knew she would not be allowed to compete in the 1936 Olympics. It was, she said, a political ploy aimed at the Americans.

She found German Jews facing a desperate situation on her return to Germany. "Jews were not allowed in restaurants, in movies, in whatever," she told the US Holocaust Memorial museum. Even though I was a member of the German Olympic women's team, I was not allowed in a stadium. I couldn't practice."

Lambert said the treatment of the Jews angered her and made her compete harder. "The madder I got, the better I did," she said.

When she moved to the US, Lambert, who has been married for 71 years, made a living as a cleaning woman and then worked as a physical therapist.

Today's gesture by the German authorities follows a similar move in 1995, when the Gretel Bergmann sports arena, in the Wilmersdorf area of Berlin, was dedicated. Lambert did not attend that ceremony, having said she never intended to set foot in Germany again.

She was an honoured guest of the German Olympic committee at the opening ceremonies of the 1996 Atlanta games.