Rising Star

Fülöp Petschauer was a successful businessman who specialized in cast iron cookware and, for a time, served as president of the National Association of Hungarian Iron Merchants. The family resided above the shop at 36 Király Street, a fashionable building around the corner from the Doheny Street Synagogue, the largest synagogue in Europe.

Attila’s talents became apparent at a young age. As an eight-year-old student at a local Jewish school, he began training at the fencing salle of Károly Fodor, a Jewish maestro who had opened his school in Budapest in 1885. Fodor recognized the boy’s talent immediately, and he honed Attila’s natural gifts with rigorous discipline.

By the time he was 20, Petschauer had outgrown Fodor’s tutelage. He moved to the prestigious Nemzeti Vivó Club. There, under the watchful eye of the legendary Italian fencing master Italo Santelli, Petschauer’s skills reached new heights. He captured four Hungarian National Youth Championships in quick succession, establishing himself as the new star of Hungary’s storied fencing legacy.

But it was on the international stage that Petschauer truly came into his own. Between 1925 and 1931, he won six medals at the World Fencing Championships — three silvers and three bronzes. His lightning-quick reflexes and unorthodox style made him formidable on the piste.

One incident cemented Petschauer’s reputation as a fencer of rare skill and daring. In 1924, a bitter dispute erupted between the Hungarian and Italian fencing federations over perceived bias in Olympic judging. To settle the matter, a grand exhibition was arranged at Budapest’s opulent Vigadó concert hall. The who’s-who of European fencing society gathered to witness a series of challenge matches between the sport’s greatest practitioners.

As the crowd buzzed with anticipation, Italo Santelli approached his star pupil. “Boy,” he said, a glimmer in his eye, “you will fence Puliti!”

Petschauer’s heart began to race. Oreste Puliti was Italy’s finest swordsman, a legend in the sport. To face him was both an honor and a monumental challenge. As he stepped onto the piste, Petschauer felt a hand on his shoulder. It was Major József Rády, the grizzled veteran of countless bouts against Italian fencers.

“Strike hard,” Rády growled. “Show no mercy. Intimidate him from the start.”

The bell rang. Petschauer exploded into action, unleashing a furious barrage that drove Puliti back. Before the Italian champion could regain his footing, Petschauer lunged. His blade found its mark with such force that Puliti staggered, toppling backwards off the piste and into the startled audience.

From that moment on, the match was a rout. Puliti, rattled and demoralized, could offer little resistance. When the final point was scored, the Vigadó erupted in thunderous applause. Petschauer had not just won — he had declared himself a force to be reckoned with on the world stage.

Word of the young Jewish fencer’s prowess spread quickly. Even Hungary’s leader, Admiral Miklos Horthy, took notice. Horthy had assumed power in 1920 following a period of Communist rule, and while he was no friend of the Jews, he was also a fencing enthusiast who recognized genius when he saw it.

During one of his regular morning lessons with Italo Santelli, Horthy eagerly inquired about Petschauer’s techniques. “Teach me some of his moves!” the regent demanded.

Santelli’s response was diplomatic but firm: “Impossible! You are a king. Petschauer is a fool…”

It was a stark reminder of the delicate balance Hungarian Jews walked, even in their “paradise.” They could achieve great things, but there were still lines that could not be crossed. A Jew, no matter how talented, would never truly be seen as equal to the Magyar elite.

Olympic Fame

Yet at the time, as the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics neared, Petschauer was riding high, and such concerns seemed distant. He arrived in the Netherlands as part of a formidable Hungarian sabre squad that included fellow Jews Endre Kabos and János Garay.

The team event was a tour de force. Hungary aced the competition, claiming gold with ease. Petschauer was in top form, his blade flashing as he dispatched opponent after opponent. Standing on the podium, gold medal around his neck, he felt a surge of pride — pride in his skill, pride in his team, and above all, pride in the nation he represented.

For some Hungarian Jews, however, recent events had wounded that pride. Back in 1920, Hungary introduced the numerus clausus law, which imposed a quota on the number of Jews that could be admitted to Hungary’s institutions of higher learning. Defining — and discriminating against — Jews as a separate “racial” or “national” group abrogated the principle of equal rights that had been in place since the Jewish emancipation in Hungary in 1867.

In 1928, due to increasing pressure from the League of Nations, the government decided to introduce modifications to the law, inducing anger from Nationalistic groups — especially university students. In October of that year, pogroms targeting Jews broke out on several university campuses.

In an interview with the Jewish weekly Egyenlöség, Petschauer pushed back against those worries and shared a message of hope and unity: “I want to tell the Hungarian Jewish community not to believe that there is true anti-Semitism in Hungary. The leading circles will eventually realize that the Jewish Hungarian is just as valuable a member of the nation as the Christian Hungarian. We have always had harmony and friendly cooperation. I urge my Jewish brethren not to succumb to irresponsible agitation but to trust in a better future.”

Four years later, at the Los Angeles Olympics, Petschauer and his teammates were greeted like heroes. Jews of Hungarian origin came out en masse to greet them and wined and dined them throughout their stay. Many prominent figures in Hollywood at the time were Jewish. Adolph Zukor, one of the three founders of Paramount Pictures, was a Hungarian Jew; William Fox (born Wilhelm Fried Fuchs), founder of Fox Film Corporation, was another.

Petschauer, moonlighting as a newspaper correspondent during the games, found himself both fascinated and bewildered by the peculiarities of America:

“The tenth Olympiad is the Olympics of interpreters. Los Angeles echoes with fifty languages, making ancient Babel seem quaint. The Olympic Committee has deployed an army of linguistic warriors, each battling for glory with at least five tongues in their arsenal. The likely champion? Herbert Liss from Philadelphia, a 33-year-old polyglot fluent in 17 languages. His salary reflects his prowess, equaling that of three lesser interpreters combined….

In another dispatch he observed:

…. Amusingly, the athletes are guarded like treasure, protected from imagined bandits by a small army of police and an array of alarms that would make Fort Knox envious. The Olympic Village resembles a fortress, leading to comical incidents as curious athletes tested unfamiliar buttons and levers. For days, Los Angeles police were summoned every minute by these inadvertent false alarms. Two English athletes even wagered on who could summon the police first — a bet that ended in a draw and hefty fines for both.”

Once again, the Hungarian fencing team did not disappoint. This time, there was no trace of suspense in the final against Italy. Hungary dominated 9–2, a margin of victory unprecedented in Olympic fencing.

At 28, Attila Petschauer was a two-time Olympic champion and one of the most celebrated athletes in Hungary. He had reached the pinnacle of his sport and brought glory to the nation he loved. But even as he basked in the glow of Olympic triumph, Attila felt that something was amiss.

The Great Depression had hit Hungary hard, exacerbating existing social and economic tensions. As in much of Europe, along with the rise of the Nazi party, radical ideologies began to take hold. Horthy’s government, seeking to shore up popular support, began to embrace more overtly nationalist and anti-Semitic policies.

Petschauer remained in the United States following the games and began to consider emigrating. He tried his hand as a foreign correspondent for a Hungarian newspaper and even met with President Herbert Hoover. But in the end, the pull of home was too strong. “I can’t live without Budapest!” he exclaimed to friends before departing from New York.

Petschauer identified first and foremost as Hungarian, and his deep-rooted patriotism and loyalty to his country overpowered his Jewish identity. Ultimately, that loyalty to his homeland is what sealed his fate.

Skies Darken in Paradise

Once back home, Petschauer was seen less and less in the fencing hall. In 1933, he didn’t compete in a single event, and the following year, his fellow Jew, Endre Kabos, firmly took the leading role on the Hungarian team. Although his financial troubles were resolved when the Az Est newspaper hired him to write a weekly column titled, “Let’s Speak Honestly,” he continued to struggle with the political turmoil. He shared:

During those lonely years, Petschauer opened up to the legendary Hungarian journalist and sports executive Dr. Gyorgi Szpesi (Friedlander): “I was once asked why I clowned around so much. Now that I am growing older and more rusty, I can confess: I was deeply saddened by people’s malice and tried to distract myself from dark thoughts with humor. I cannot accept that I am increasingly disregarded as a person.”

In 1938, emulating Nazi Germany’s infamous Nuremberg Laws, Hungary passed its first major anti-Jewish legislation in almost two decades. The “First Jewish Law” restricted the number of Jews in certain professions to 20 percent. It was followed in quick succession by the Second and Third Jewish Laws, which further curtailed Jewish rights and economic opportunities.

The ground was shifting beneath the feet of Attila Petschauer and his fellow Jewish Olympians. The “paradise” they had been living in, lauded by The Forward just two decades earlier, was crumbling. Many began to contemplate leaving Hungary altogether.

Their faith in their native land was being sorely tested. As a celebrated athlete, Petschauer initially received special exemption from Munkaszolgálat (Labor Service) imposed on many Hungarian Jews. The Service was established in 1919 for civilians who were either unwilling or unable to serve in the regular army. While not originally directed at Jews, in 1938, the Labor Service was transformed into a forced labor institution directed solely at Jews. As World War II progressed, the situation of the Jews in these labor companies, who were often incarcerated in labor camps known as munkatabors, became extremely difficult, and about 80 percent did not survive.

On April 27, 1942, Attila Petschauer reported for duty at a Budapest train station. Dressed in light spring clothing that was wholly inadequate for what lay ahead, he approached the commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Lipót Muray.

“Your Excellency,” Petschauer said, his voice tinged with desperation, “there must be a terrible mistake. I am an Olympic champion, a recipient of the Signum Laudim medal.” He fumbled in his pocket and produced copies of his many awards and accolades.

Muray’s response was chilling: “Shut up! Those awards don’t mean anything here! The ones who sent you here know what they’re doing.”

And with that, Attila Petschauer — two-time Olympic champion, hero of Hungary — was herded onto a train bound for the Ukrainian border.

Hard Landing

The uncomfortable conditions and cloud of uncertainty made for a harrowing journey. When the train finally lurched to a halt, Petschauer and his fellow Jews were marched to their first “assignment.” Nothing in his privileged life as an athlete and celebrated public figure had prepared him for the harsh reality he now faced.

In a 1976 article, his fellow laborer Gyula Hegyi shared Petschauer’s expression and uncertain steps indicated that his hopes placed in his decorations had been shattered:

Kursk was the company’s first station. We worked at the railway yard for a long time, initially under the command of sappers. When we arrived, the sappers watched us for a while, then suddenly attacked us with sticks, beating us while shouting why we hadn’t started working already. Only after the “introduction” did they issue the task. The day before, several trainloads of horses had arrived at the station. We had to carry the manure dumped by the tracks to a garbage heap about eighty meters away. They gave us no tools or transport equipment. We had to carry the manure in our jackets or overcoats, picked up by hand. We had to approach the garbage heap by crawling under the wagons and then running. Anyone who didn’t run fast enough or had an undesirable face was beaten. One of our comrades suffered a broken spine from the kicks and died on the third day. He was the company’s first casualty.

By the time October came, temperatures plunged well below freezing. The barracks were crude and overcrowded, offering little protection from the biting wind. Food was scarce, the work backbreaking. The forced labor crews were usually put to work alongside the German or Hungarian armies, preparing roads and doing other harsh labor to benefit the war effort — with minimal, primitive tools such as shovels and axes. Petschauer, accustomed to a life of relative ease, felt his spirits flag.

Even in these dire circumstances, glimmers of his old charm and wit occasionally shone through. Drawing on his experiences traveling the world as an athlete, Petschauer would regale his fellow prisoners with colorful anecdotes. He spoke of visiting an Indian tribe in California, where he was declared an honorary “Indian Chief” by a chief named Hawkeye in exchange for fencing lessons. He recalled the team’s visit with President Hoover in Washington, chuckling at the memory of sweating in formal wear while the President greeted them in casual summer attire. He described lavish Hollywood parties, rubbing elbows with film stars — a world that now seemed distant and unreal.

These moments of levity were precious, but they could not keep the grim reality at bay for long. Petschauer’s health began to deteriorate rapidly. The man who had once been in top form now more closely resembled, in the words of a fellow prisoner, “a ragged old beggar than an Olympic swordsman.”

Once, Petschauer shared with Hegyi his theory as to who might have sent him to the front. In the mid-1930s, he had competed in Vienna. One evening, in the luxury hotel where he was staying, a captain passed him on the staircase and, without any preamble, called him a “Jew.” Petschauer responded with a hard slap. Shortly after the incident, the captain’s aides appeared and challenged Petschauer to a duel. He asked what weapon they suggested. Strangely, they agreed on swords. The next morning in the fencing hall, the captain was visibly nervous. Petschauer placed his sword across the captain’s mouth and cut his cheeks on both sides. The captain had become a staff officer and a lieutenant colonel by 1942. (Petschauer couldn’t recall his name.) Petschauer attributed his assignment to the front to the captain’s revenge.

Word of Petschauer’s circumstances spread across the region, eventually reaching Russian intelligence, who gleefully published the story in a bulletin supplied to its embassies across the world by its information bureau:

HUNGARIANS FORCE JEWISH INTELLECTUALS INTO LABOR BATTALIONS

Among the crowds of Hungarian soldiers plodding eastward through the open steppes west of Voronezh, hoping to be taken prisoner and thus saved from death by cold and hunger, go the most miserable men in the Axis armies the Hungarian Jews mobilized for labor battalions. They were sent to the front in whatever they were wearing when seized, and many are in summer clothes or light coats.

Nearly all of these men are intellectuals, engineers, teachers, journalists and doctors. Among them were the world-famous biochemist, Akosh Mishkoltsi, and the world fencing champion, Attila Petschauer. All were forced to wear the yellow armband proclaiming them to be Jews.

The Hungarians set them to digging trenches under fire. Their food ration was only 250 grams of bread per day. Bullets, famine and disease are rapidly decimating them.

In a 1988 article in a Hungarian sports magazine, journalist László Kocsis Dernői shared a moving story:

“In 1967, I shared a room with Dr. P. M., a chief surgeon in a Buda hospital, as we were both suffering from heart disease. After passing the immediate life-threatening phase, we were kept there for five more weeks, giving us plenty of time to talk about life and history. ’I was in a company with Attila Petschauer,’ he once said and then related a heartbreaking story about Attila:

As his body weakened, Petschauer found himself turning inward, reconnecting with the faith of his childhood. Though he had long drifted away from observance, the approach of the High Holidays stirred something deep within him.

One day, hearing his fellow prisoners lament the lack of prayer books, Petschauer spoke up: “I can recite the prayers…”

The others gathered around him, astonished. “All of them?”

“All of them,” Petschauer affirmed. And in that desolate camp, the Olympic champion began to intone the ancient words. The voice that used to charm journalists and sports fans now rose in the timeless cadences of tefillah.

When he finished, there was a moment of profound silence. Then, to everyone’s shock, Petschauer’s demeanor abruptly changed. “And now, my fellow Jews,” he cried, “let us hear the festive speech of Chief Rabbi Simon Hevesi!”

What followed was a pitch-perfect imitation of Budapest’s chief rabbi, complete with exaggerated gestures and flowery rhetoric. For a moment, the other prisoners were too stunned to react. Then, tentatively at first but with growing conviction, laughter began to ripple through the group.

“Why shouldn’t we laugh, dear friends?” Petschauer asked, his eyes glinting with a hint of his old self. “We prayed because we must pray on this day; we cried because we have every reason to cry. But if we are done with prayer and crying, let us be cheerful, for the holiday is also meant for joy.”

Betrayal Leads to the Brutal End

One day in 1942, while out on a grueling work detail, Petschauer spotted a familiar face among the camp’s officers. It was Kálmán Cseh, a former equestrian who had represented Hungary alongside Petschauer at the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam. The two had even competed on the same day, August 10, albeit with different results. While Cseh had embarrassingly fallen off his horse during the cross-country competition, Petschauer and his sabre team ended up on the podium, waving their gold medals while the Hungarian National Anthem played.

Cseh had since joined the Arrow Cross Party, a fascist party that controlled Hungary during World War II. He rose through the ranks until he became a lieutenant colonel in the army of Admiral Miklos Horthy, who served as the regent of Hungary.

Petschauer’s heart leaped. Surely his old teammate would recognize him and intervene on his behalf. The Olympic champion looked up at the powerful lieutenant colonel, and recognition flashed in his eyes. He recalled another meeting before departing for Amsterdam in 1928, when Cseh, embraced Petschauer at the train station and said: “You with the sword, I with the horse will bring glory to the Hungarian colors!” He approached Cseh, a tentative smile on his gaunt face.

But Cseh’s reaction was one of utter contempt. He turned to his subordinates and, referring to Petschauer only as “the Jew,” instructed them to “make things hot for him.” With a wide smirk, Cseh strode away.

The next day, Cseh penned a letter to his superiors in Budapest, writing with sneering disdain about the labor servicemen and noting that they had “already realized that it doesn’t matter here whether they live or die.  Many forced laborers perished while clearing mines, but it’s not a problem, at least the soil will be more fertile. They are like beasts of burden; you can do anything with them.”

Of Petschauer specifically, he wrote: “Attila Petschauer had a bit of willpower, but when the sergeant gave him a good beating and dunked his head in manure, he became thoroughly tamed. Now he works without thinking.”

It was a betrayal of staggering cruelty, one that sealed Petschauer’s fate.

(In his letter, Cseh boasted about the atrocities committed by the men under his command: “There are some real heroes here,” he writes. “Imagine, Tibor, we had a man who shot fifteen of them (the laborers) in half an hour. And there was one who stabbed 15–20 of them in a short time.”)

The end, when it came, was brutal and senseless. On January 20, 1943, a freezing day, the camp guards decided to amuse themselves at Petschauer’s expense.

“You, Olympic fencing medal winner,” they jeered, “let’s see how you can climb trees.”

They forced him to undress in the frigid -30 degrees Celcius temperature and ordered him up a nearby tree. As Petschauer clung to the icy branches, the guards commanded him to crow like a rooster. Then, laughing, they turned a hose on him.

Among the horrified onlookers forced to witness this spectacle was another Jewish-Hungarian Olympian: Károly Kárpáti, a wrestler from Debrecin who had won gold at the 1936 Berlin Games. Kárpáti would never forget the nightmarish spectacle.

“Slowly, ice began to form on his body,” Kárpáti later recalled. “He fell to the ground and collapsed. We were allowed to carry him back to his quarters, but a few hours later he died.”

Most other sources describe Petschauer’s death as occurring a few days later, after the Russian’s overtook the area on Jan 22.  Several sources in a compilation entitled, “You Are the Witness” describe a following a period of terrible suffering for Petschauer, as the camp lacked a proper doctor and medical supplies. Finally, following the Soviet breakthrough, they were able to bring a skilled doctor to examine him. (One source claims the said doctor was the famed Surgeon General of the Red Army, Nikolay Burdenko.)

“I’ve never seen anything like this!” the doctor said, describing Petschauer’s condition. “This man was beaten with wire whips and chains until the flesh completely separated from his back, leaving the spine exposed. Here, medicine is powerless. The spinal cord is injured in three or four places — that much is immediately visible. The rest… The only thing we can do for him is to ensure that he does not regain consciousness; the pain would be so unbearable that no human could endure it.”

On his orders, they gave an injection to the unconscious Petschauer, who was still moaning, and then the doctor left the sickroom.”

“Sometimes,” the author recalls the doctor remarking  “a person is forced to be ashamed that he was born human.”

Attila Petschauer — Olympic champion, Hungarian patriot, Jew — perished in a Ukrainian labor camp; he was 38 years old.

Similar Fates for Other Olympians

Petschauer was not the only Jewish member of Hungary’s Olympic sabre teams to fall victim to the Holocaust. Endre Kabos, his teammate in 1928 and 1932, was shot and killed by Arrow Cross militiamen on the banks of the Danube in late 1944. Attila Petschauer’s cousin, Erno Földes, who had won bronze in sabre in 1928 and 1932, perished in a Nazi concentration camp.

And it wasn’t just the sabre team. The roll call of Hungarian Jewish Olympians murdered in the Holocaust is long and heartbreaking. Boxer István Enekes, gymnast Miklós Szabados, water polo player Béla Komjádi — champions all — had their lives cut brutally short by the very nation to which they had brought such glory and trusted so deeply.

In the decades since World War II, Hungary has grappled with its complicity in the Holocaust. The story of Attila Petschauer and his fellow Jewish Olympians serves as a stark​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ reminder of the heights from which Hungarian Jewry fell, and the depths of betrayal they endured.

Hungary’s embrace of Nazi ideology was not a reluctant capitulation to German pressure, but a choice made with enthusiasm by large swaths of the population. The same patriotic fervor that had once celebrated Jewish achievement was now turned against the Jewish community with terrifying force.

The betrayal was total and devastating. Neighbors turned on neighbors, colleagues denounced colleagues, and even fellow Olympians now saw their Jewish teammates as subhuman.

The deportation of over 400,000 Jews to Auschwitz was conducted not by German soldiers, but by Hungarian gendarmes and civil servants.

This bitter irony lay not just in personal tragedies like Attila Petschauer’s, but in what it revealed about the society he had so proudly represented. Hungary, once hailed as a “paradise for Jews,” had shown its true colors.

The Hungarian-born Israeli journalist Avigdor Hameiri, on an unsuccessful 1930 trip back to his homeland to promote aliyah, sardonically observed, “We Jews of Hungary scornfully reject any kind of outside interference, as it were, that comes to our aid. We are pure Magyars, who suffer together with the homeland and, even if the homeland itself beats us with iron rods, we will lovingly embrace and kiss the instruments of torture.”

Hameiri’s words, intended as biting satire, proved tragically prophetic. The story of Attila Petschauer and his fellow Jewish Olympians reveals the bitter truth — that no amount of patriotism, no level of achievement, could shield them from the tidal wave of hatred that engulfed their beloved Hungary. Nothing could. Not even Olympic Gold.

The insights and contributions of the following journalists, authors, and researchers were invaluable in the preparation of this article: Iván Hegyi, János Várszegi, Allon Sinai, Attila Ághassi, Gyula Hegyi, Béla Illés, Oszkár Zsadányi, Paul Taylor, Jehuda Hartman, Chaya Sarah Herman, Esther Farbstein, Avigdor Hameiri (Feuerstein), and the Russian State Archives

1938

May 28: The Hungarian parliament passes the First Jewish Law.

1939

March 11: The Hungarian parliament passes a law that lays the legal foundation for military labor companies.

March 15: Germany annexes Czechoslovakia. Hungary annexes Carpatho-Rus.

May 4: The Hungarian parliament passes the Second Jewish Law.

September 1: World War II breaks out as Germany invades Poland.

1940

August: Hungary annexes northern Transylvania from Romania.

December 2: The Hungarian army issues discriminatory orders. Special Jewish forced-labor companies are established.

1941

April: The period of service in Jewish companies is increased to two years; the range of draft ages is expanded.

May: Jewish conscripts are required to wear yellow armbands and civilian clothes.

June 27: Hungary declares war on the USSR.

August 2: The Hungarian parliament passes the Third Jewish Law (Racial Protection Law).

August 27-28: “Foreign” Jews are hunted down; 18,000 are deported to Kamenets-Podolsk, Ukraine.

1942

April 11: About 50,000 Jewish labor servicemen are sent to the Eastern Front.

1943

January 22: The Hungarian army is defeated near the River Don; 25,000 labor are servicemen killed.

April: Hundreds of Jews in labor service are burned to death in Doroschich.

July 2: Some 3,000 Jews in labor service are sent to Bor, Yugoslavia.

1944

January: Some 1,200 Jews massacred by the Hungarian army at Délvidék and Novi Sad.

March 19: Operation Margarethe: Germany occupies Hungary.

Summer: Men and women are conscripted into labor service.

October 7-8: Labor servicemen returning from Bor are massacred at Cserevenka.

November: After the Arrow Cross coup, forced labor intensifies, and 70 Jewish labor companies are handed over to Germans.

1945

January-May: The Red Army invades and liberates Hungary.

Original compilation by Zvi Erez in Sho’at Yehudei Hungarya

English translation published in Hidden in the Heights by Esther Farbstein

Justice Not Served

The fate of Kálmán Cseh, whose callous betrayal sealed Petschauer’s doom, serves as a bitter postscript to this tragedy. After the war, investigators unearthed the full scope of Cseh’s crimes. Beyond inciting brutality against Jewish prisoners, he had actively plundered occupied Ukraine, shipping tractors, lumber, carpets, and even church bells back to his Hungarian estate.

Initially, it seemed justice would prevail. The former Iron Cross recipient faced charges for his crimes against humanity. During interrogation, Cseh reportedly confessed to authoring the “extraordinarily vile letter” detailing Petschauer’s torture.

Yet, the wheels of justice ground to a halt. Despite early reports of punishment, Cseh was exonerated at his 1947 trial . A decade later, he brazenly penned letters to local newspapers, lamenting the decline of Hungary’s equestrian scene — as if the blood on his hands had long since been washed away.

In a final, cruel irony, a recent book titled Hungarian Horsemen at the Olympic Games celebrates Cseh alongside other equestrian Olympians. Edited by Béla Győr, head of the Memorial and Tradition Preservation Subcommittee of the Hungarian Olympic Committee, the book chronicles the Olympic performances of Hungarian equestrians. Cseh’s biography, complete with archival images, sits alongside those of true sporting heroes — with no mention of his wartime atrocities.

Cseh passed away peacefully in Budapest in 1986 and was interred at the New Public Cemetery — a stone’s throw from the Kozma Street Jewish Cemetery, where Károly Kárpáti lies in eternal rest.

This whitewashing of history, this casual embrace of a man who so callously betrayed his fellow Olympian, stands as a stark reminder of Hungary’s ongoing struggle to fully reckon with its dark past.

Cseh Aquitted!

Published in Szabadság, December 18, 1947

Colonel Kálmán Cseh, the former noble rider and aide-de-camp to the executed Gusztáv Jány, served in Ukraine. In his letters from the battlefield to Budapest, he praised the victorious German army, slandered the Russian army, and in one letter, wrote about the torture of Attila Petschauer. He boasted about thoroughly tormenting the Olympic fencing champion. According to the indictment, Kálmán Cseh plundered the Ukrainian population and sent the stolen valuables to his family in Budapest. He conscripted a master builder into the army to use his labor for free on his house under construction. Despite these serious charges, the people’s court, led by István Zsoldos, inexplicably acquitted the cruel colonel. Prosecutor György Ruttkay appealed. It is hoped that the reconstituted National People’s Tribunal will overturn the scandalous verdict.

Enduring Witness

For the Hungarian Jewish Olympians who survived the Holocaust, the trauma of what they had witnessed would never fully fade. Károly Kárpáti, who became a celebrated wrestling coach after the war, spoke often of Petschauer’s horrific death. It was as if by bearing witness, by ensuring the story was told, he could in some small way honor his fallen comrade. Kárpáti’s endurance has been well documented, but an unusual perspective is provided in “Warmth From Distant Embers: Three Generations and the Holocaust,” the memoirs of Ann Arbor, Michigan based musicanmusician and writer Sandor Slomovits.”

My father Herman’s love of wrestling dated back to many years before he discovered it on American TV. In the 1930s, he was living with his first wife and their three small children in Kunhegyes, a small town about an hour from Budapest, where he served as cantor, teacher, and rabbi to the approximately 220 Jews in that community. In 1937, he traveled to Debrecen to audition for a position in a larger synagogue. Following Friday night services, he mentioned to some of the congregants that he was staying at the Nemzeti Kasino Hotel. Several of them immediately advised him not to walk there after dark, as roving bands of anti-Semitic students had been beating Jews. My father would not have considered taking a taxi or bus or trolley on the Sabbath and was about to ask for hospitality from someone in the group, when a man spoke up: “I’ll walk him there. He’ll be safe.”

My father looked at the speaker skeptically. At first glance, he did not appear to be an impressive physical specimen, no taller than my father’s five-foot five inches. But a second look revealed the thick, muscular neck, nearly as wide as his head, and the arms akimbo stance of a powerful weightlifter or wrestler. He was two-time Olympian, Károly Kárpáti.

Kárpáti was famous throughout Hungary, and especially among Jews, for having won a silver medal in freestyle wrestling in the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles, and the gold medal in the same event in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. (Kárpáti won that medal by beating Germany’s vaunted titleholder, Wolfgang Ehrl, drawing the ire of Hitler himself.)

Born Károly Klein, he had assumed the Magyar name Kárpáti, to disguise his Jewishness, thus allowing him to wrestle in Berlin despite the anti-Semitic atmosphere at those Games. He was reputed to have said before his final match in Berlin, “I will come out of this ring Olympic champion, or I will be carried out dead.”

Kárpáti and my father set off together for the Nemzeti Kasino. My father was easily identifiable as a Jew by his traditional black hat and beard. Kárpáti, though also an observant Jew, wore a nondescript cap and was beardless. Indeed, as they neared the hotel, half a dozen students — appearing somewhat inebriated — attacked my father and the Olympic champion.

While my father stood by and watched, Kárpáti grabbed two of the gang and, in an astonishing display of power and athletic skill, used them as cudgels to beat the others, routing the whole band.

My father did not get the job in Debrecen and after that night didn’t see Kárpáti for five years. They met again in the munkaszolgálat, the forced labor crews of Jews attached to the Hungarian and German armies. My father had been ordered into the munkaszolgálat in 1942. Kárpáti, as an Olympic champion and national hero, had been exempted at first. But by 1943, all exemptions were banned and Kárpáti wound up in the same camp as my father in Nadvirna, Poland.

My father immediately recognized Kárpáti, who also remembered him and the night in Debrecen five years earlier. He asked my father, “How do the Nazis treat us here?” My father replied, “As long as you do your work, there is no problem. But if you slow down too much they give you a shove with their gun butts.” Kárpáti snorted, “Let them just try to shove me. The man who touches me is in death’s hands.”

Remembering Kárpáti’s bravado in Debrecen, my father became alarmed. “Don’t be a smart guy here,” he pleaded. “They have guns and bayonets. They won’t hesitate to use them on all of us. Your bare hands won’t do you any good. They don’t fight by Olympic rules here.” Several others chimed in, begging Kárpáti not even to think of retaliating, but he just repeated, “I can’t help it. I won’t be able to hold myself back. The man who touches me dies.”

Using shovels, rakes, and pickaxes, the work detail was widening a narrow dirt road for tanks and cars. My father remembered that they were at a small bridge spanning a shallow stream when a German guard, walking along the line of the working men, casually nudged Kárpáti with his gun stock. “Schnell! Schnell!,” faster, faster. Kárpáti whirled around, twisted the rifle out of the soldier’s hands, broke it over his knee, grabbed the astonished man and threw him over the bridge into the stream below.

My father and the rest of the approximately 100 Jews in the work detail immediately began chanting Shema Yisrael, sure that their death was at hand.

Miraculously, nothing happened. Perhaps, despite Nazi propaganda about the physical inferiority of Jews, the officer in charge at the scene was impressed with Kárpáti’s skill and strength. He decided to summon his commanding officer, who chose to punish the hapless soldier who’d been tossed into the stream by Kárpáti — for allowing a Jew to do that to him.

To maintain discipline though, Kárpáti was immediately transferred elsewhere. My father never saw him again but heard that he pulled a similar stunt a few weeks later and was beaten so badly that his broken ribs punctured his lungs. Rumor had it that the beating was arranged by friends of a German wrestler who Kárpáti had defeated in the Berlin Olympics.

Kárpáti did survive the war, returned to Budapest, changed his name back to Klein (unclear whether this actually stuck) and went on to a successful career, coaching Hungary’s Olympic wrestlers.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1025)