Berlin 36

A feature film. The story of Margret Lambert (born as Gretel Bergmann), who was heading for an Olympic gold medal before she was bounced out of the squad. The Nazis wanted to ensure that Hitler would not be embarrassed by a Jewish athlete winning a gold medal for Germany. Her room-mate and eventual replacement, the film reveals, was Dora Ratjen (was a male named Horst Ratjen). “Dora”, despite his male hormones, managed to gain only fourth place. Two years later, still posing as a woman, he set a new world high jump record for women of 1.70m but was disqualified after a doctor discovered that he had strapped up his genitals. He was stripped of his title and was quickly conscripted into the army; his personal details disappeared from German archives.