AFTER 60 YEARS, GOING FOR THE GOLD : KEPT FROM THE '36 GAMES, SHE'LL BE A GUEST IN '96.

Byline: Ira Berkow The New York Times

The envelope was postmarked Frankfurt, Germany, and bore the return address of ``Der Prasident, Nationales Olympisches Komitee fur Deutschland.'' It was delivered last month to an elderly, white-haired Jewish woman living in a two-story brick house in the Jamaica Estates section of Queens, N.Y..

The letter to Margaret Bergmann Lambert, 82, was written in English, under the letterhead of Walter Troeger, president.

``It is my honor and pleasure to inform you,'' the letter began, ``that the National Olympic Committee for Germany has decided to invite you to be our guest of honor during the Olympic Centennial Games in Atlanta.

``This is on the grounds of our relations over the last year, and the discussion we had in New York. As you were not in a position to accept our invitation to Germany for reasons we understand and honor, we feel that this invitation might be an equivalence.''

Lambert is still slender at 5 feet 7 inches, her white hair cut short. During a recent visit she wore glasses, white sneakers, a summer blouse and blue jeans that cover her long jumper's legs.

She had opened the letter in her foyer. Close by, in a glass case, were a host of world-class track and field medals, including the one with the swastika from the meet in June 1936 when she high-jumped a winning 5 feet 3 inches, the same height that would be good enough to capture the gold medal later that summer in the Berlin Olympics.

But not by her. She was not allowed to compete because she was a Jew in Nazi Germany.

Lambert knows that she never really had a chance of making the Olympic team. That no German Jews could have competed for the country in 1936, even though she was lured into training with threats against her family. That her training was all ``a charade,'' as she put it, a propaganda tool to show the world an unbiased Germany.

And now the German Olympic committee was extending a hand of apology and friendship, a form of reparation. She would even be allowed to bring a guest, her husband, Dr. Bruno Lambert, a former college runner whom she had met in Germany in 1935.

Lambert had not been ``in a position,'' as the letter put it, to accept an invitation to Germany - where a gymnasium in Berlin was named for her last year - because she had sworn to herself when she left in 1937 that she would never set foot on German soil again. And she hasn't.

Lambert, known then by her nickname and maiden name, Gretel Bergmann, has an appealing sense of humor and an easy laugh, but there is another layer beneath that. She has lived much of her life with hatred and resentment. Hatred at how the Nazi regime twisted the lives of friends and family, sending many of them to the gas chambers. And resentment for opportunities lost.

Much of this flooded back as she read the letter. Recently she watched the Atlanta Grand Prix, a major pre-Olympic track and field meet, on television.

``And suddenly I realized that there were tears just flowing down my cheeks,'' she recalled. ``I'm not a crier. But now I just couldn't help it. I remember watching those athletes, and remembering what it was like for me in 1936, how I could very well have won an Olympic medal. And through the tears, I said, `Damn it!'''

Margaret Bergmann was born in 1914 in the small farming community of Laupheim, Germany, near the Swiss border. Her father, Edwin, owned a hair-supplies factory, and she said she experienced no anti-Semitism until she was 19 and Hitler came to power. She had been a natural athlete, and competed and was victorious in local and national meets.

``My parents thought I was a freak because I loved sports so much,'' she recalled. ``I mean, a nice Jewish girl? They wanted me to learn to sew and cook. Which, by the way, I learned, too.''

Now suddenly there were anti-Jewish edicts in Germany. Jews could not shop in gentile stores, and gentiles could not shop in Jewish stores. Jews weren't allowed in movie houses or theaters and could not stroll in the parks. There were beatings of Jews.

Gretel Bergmann had been accepted to the University of Berlin, but the admission was withdrawn.

``I will never forget what that letter said - `Let's wait for this thing to blow over' - meaning, this Hitler thing can't last,'' she said.

But that was enough for her. In 1934, she left for England and school there. In 1935, she won the British women's high-jump championship. Her father traveled there to see her compete, or so she thought. In fact, he had come with a message, one he could not risk relating by either letter or telephone.

``He told me the Germans wanted me to return and try out for the Olympic team,'' she said. ``I said, `I'm not going.' He said that there had been veiled threats on our family if I didn't come back. I packed my bags and sailed with him the next day.''

The Nazis did not want Jews participating in their Berlin Olympics, but they tried to put on a different face for those, especially some groups in America, who protested that the Germans were discriminating against Jewish athletes.

``But it was a charade,'' Lambert said. ``The handful of Jewish track and field athletes were not allowed to be in the German Athletic Association because we were Jews, and that's where the best training and competition existed. We were forced to train in potato fields.''

On the few occasions when she did train with the other German women, Gretel Bergmann made some friends, including the high-jumper Elfriede Kaun and the discus thrower Gisela Mauermayer.

``The girls were always very nice,'' Lambert said. ``It was the officials who were terrible. The propaganda then was that Jews were the scum of the earth. That's how the officials treated us.''

On June 30, 1936, just one month before the Olympics, she was permitted to jump at Adolf Hitler Stadium in Stuttgart, the last major Olympic trial.

``I remember all the Nazi flags and all the officials saluting and I jumped like a fiend,'' she said. ``I always did my best when I was angry. I never jumped better; I didn't miss a jump.'' And her mark of 5-3 equaled the German record.

When she prepared to jump for the record, she grew scared.

``I thought, this would be a slap in the face to the Aryans,'' she said. ``What would they do to me? Would they break my legs? Would they kill me? What would they do to my family? And I just fell apart. I couldn't really lift myself again.''

But her earlier jump stood. And then on July 16 - one day after the American team set sail for Europe, and two weeks after her outstanding jump - she received a letter from the German Olympic committee, informing her that she did not make the team: ``Looking back on your recent performances, you could not possibly have expected to be chosen for the team.''

The letter, which she has saved, went on to offer her a standing-room-only ticket, ``free of charge,'' for the track and field events, ``though expenses for transportation and hotel accommodations unfortunately cannot be supplied. Heil Hitler

''

She never replied. The Hungarian jumper Ibolya Csak won the gold medal, and Kaun, whom Bergmann had beaten during Olympic training sessions, won the bronze. Both jumped 5-3. Mauermayer won the gold in the discus. In later years, Lambert corresponded with both German women, who were sympathetic.

``Of course, we knew you were Jewish but never treated you differently because you were another athlete like we were,'' said Mauermayer. And Kaun wrote: ``They told us you were unable to compete because you had been injured.''

In 1937, Gretel Bergmann was able to get papers to emigrate to the United States, landing here with $10, all the money the Germans allowed her to take out of the country. She took jobs in New York as a masseuse and a housemaid and, later, a physical therapist.

She won the U.S. high jump and shot-put championships in 1937 and the high jump again in 1938. She was preparing for another run at the title in 1939 when war broke out in Europe. ``And since my family was still in Europe, I stopped competing,'' she said.

Her mother, father and two brothers escaped to America in 1939. Many others in her family, including her grandparents, and her husband's family, including his parents, were murdered in concentration camps.

``We feel that Mrs. Lambert was not treated adequately at the time of the Berlin Olympics,'' Troeger, the president of the German Olympic committee, said by telephone from Frankfurt last week.

``She was an Olympic candidate who did not get a fair chance. We wanted to do something for her, we felt she deserved it. And since she was not coming back to Germany, the idea that the Games were taking place in her country now seemed very appropriate.''

Though Lambert did not return to Germany last year, her two sons, Glenn and Gary, did. ``They told me, `You know, Mom, we only knew about the Nazis,''' she said. ```These people are different. They have a different way of looking at things.'

``I don't hate all Germans anymore, though I did for a long time. I can't even speak German too well, anymore. I had tried to forget the language. But I'm aware of many Germans trying to make up for wrongs as well as they know how. In recent years, I've got a bunch of letters from Germans saying how sorry they are.

``And I thought, yes, the young people of Germany should not be held responsible for what their elders did. And I decided to accept the invitation to go to Atlanta. I felt that there would be publicity in Germany - there has been already - and the young people should always be aware of what happened to innocent people so many years ago.

``And while I know I could never root for the German team - I'll be cheering for the Americans - I thought that going to Atlanta as the guest of honor of the German Olympic committee would be good for my mental outlook. It will make the ghosts of the past a little less unfriendly.''

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Photo: Margaret Bergmann Lambert refused to return to Germa ny, which kept her off its 1936 team, but she will attend the Olympic games in Atlanta as Germany's guest.

The New York Times