Helen Stephens was 18 years old when she won two gold medals at the Berlin Olympics and met Adolf Hitler. She was also a queer woman who defied gender stereotypes.
Helen Stephens was 18 years old when she won two gold medals at the Berlin Olympics and met Adolf Hitler. He “strode forward and gave me a sloppy Nazi salute,” Stephens said in a 1984 oral history interview. “I didn’t return it and I gave him my ‘ole Missouri handshake I always say... . He said I was a pure Aryan type and I should have been running for Germany. I should be a German.
German Olympic officials refuted this accusation, saying all athletes had undergone medical inspections that would have revealed this if true. At least one U.S. newspaper contacted Stephen's mother to ask her directly about her daughter's gender. Mrs. Bertie May Stephens told the reporter that her daughter was 'absolutely a girl' and added that she didn't like to speculate on what kind of person would 'charge that she was anything else.
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