Jemima’s gold medal powered by grandmother’s Auschwitz survivor story

Jemima Montag told journalists the thought of her grandmother walking across ice kept her going at the Commonwealth Games.

This is a walking gold medal that was born in the Holocaust, in the concentration camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau and others.

Every step of her 10-kilometre race-walking victory, Jemima Montag had a small gold bracelet clinking away on her wrist against her smartwatch. It was a cut-down necklace of her grandmother’s and a constant reminder, with each kilometre ticking over, of her grandmother’s sacrifice and the perseverance of her family.

The thought of her grandmother avoiding gas chambers and walking to freedom across ice with no food and barely any clothes made walking around a blue track in the Birmingham sunshine easy.

Montag’s grandparents were survivors of Auschwitz. Her grandmother Judith died last year before the Olympics, and in hotel quarantine Montag and her aunt waded through love letters and documents and uncovered more of the family’s extraordinary story.

“In some of her love letters and journal entries she wrote about just trying to make it through the next hour, the next day, hoping to meet her dad at the gate with a piece of bread. I think I take from that in a race that it is one kilometre at a time, one step at a time, not thinking about the finish line,” Montag said.

“So, visualising her walking on ice, not knowing when her next meal would be, or if she would survive. Yes, this is fun and something I choose to do, and yes, it’s hard, but someone just two generations ago had that level of strength and I know it is with me now.”

READ MORE
From Auschwitz to a gold medal: Montag’s incredible long walk to victory (SMH)

LISTEN
Jemima Montag talks to Ashley Browne (The Jewish Independent)