Dora ratjen gretel bergmann biography
Dora RATJEN -!
Dora ratjen gretel bergmann biography
The Jewish jumper and the male impostor
Gretel Bergmann, now Margaret Bergmann Lambert, never got to the bottom of why Horst Ratjen became Dora
A new film tells the remarkable story of a female Jewish high jumper banned by the Nazis from the 1936 Olympics in Berlin - and whose team mate, it later turned out, was a man in disguise.
Berlin 36, due out this week, recounts how Gretel Bergmann was tipped for Olympic glory but was bumped off the German team at the last minute for fear that a gold-medal winning Jewish athlete would embarrass Hitler.
Instead, her "weird" room-mate Dora Ratjen competed. Dora gained only fourth place, but caused controversy two years later when a doctor discovered "she" was actually a he.
Gretel Bergmann emigrated to the US in 1937 and married a doctor, Bruno Lambert.
Now aged 95, she still lives in New York, as Margaret Bergmann Lambert.
She described to the BBC's World Today the events of the 1930s, her reaction