Star Metro - Australian bronze medallist Montag pays tribute to Holocaust survivor grandmother

Judith -- mother of Montag's father Ray -- died just before the Covid-delayed Tokyo Olympics in 2021 and had never related to her family her appalling World War II experiences.

A year later Montag, wearing the bracelet, was in tears after she won the Commonwealth Games 10km walk title in Birmingham.

The 26-year-old Australian and her sisters, Piper and Amanda, all wear the gold bracelets, made from a necklace.

After winning Commonwealth gold in 2022, Montag said: "Towards the end of the Holocaust (in mid-January 1945) they marched through snow and cold for days on end in little sandals and hardly any clothing.

"She and her sister took waistbands and tied their wrists together and said 'we are getting through this together or not at all'.

"Just visualising her walking on ice, not knowing when the next meal would be or if she would survive."

Montag, who also took silver in the world championships last year, said Judith had passed on several of her traits.

"She is always with me, and Paris was a very special place for her.

"She had a great resilience, a toughness that she passed on to my dad, and he has instilled in my sisters and I."

Having grown up without knowing about her grandmother's harrowing wartime experience, Montag and an aunt began looking into Judith's life after the Tokyo Games, even having her love letters translated by a Polish race walker friend.

She admitted that on Thursday at the 15-kilometre mark of a tough course along the banks of the Seine, she was in fifth place and the heat was beating down and she "wasn't even sure if I wanted it (the medal) or not."

However, wearing the bracelet was her spur to go for it.

"That's absolutely what you need to get through a gruelling race walk," she said.

Montag is in awe of the many times during her incarceration in Auschwitz that Judith came close to death.

"In some letters and journal entries, she wrote about just trying to make it through the next hour and next day, and meet her dad at the gate with a piece of bread," she recalled in 2022.

She said she hoped her medal-winning performance at the Paris Olympics would have showed her grandmother, if she were looking down, that she had not wasted the life lessons she took from her.

"If she was here I would tell her I am not taking this for granted," said Montag, who until recently worked for a company that delivered food to under-privileged families.

"Her life was nearly taken away so many times.

"I thank her for her courage. And I hope I've made the most of it."

A.Gagnon--SMC