Attila Petschauer (December 14, 1904 – January 30, 1943) was a Hungarian

Olympic Olympic or Olympics may refer to Sports Competitions * Olympic Games, international multi-sport event held since 1896 ** Summer Olympic Games ** Winter Olympic Games * Ancient Olympic Games, ancient multi-sport event held in Olympia, Greece b ...

champion sabre fencer of

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

heritage.

Fencing career

Petschauer was born in

Budapest Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population ...

, and was Jewish. He fenced first at a salle in Budapest opened in 1885 by Jewish maestro Károly Fodor (Mózes Freyberger) from the age of 8 to the age of 20, and then trained at Nemzeti Vivó Club (NVC) which was established by the

Zionist Zionism ( he, צִיּוֹנוּת ''Tsiyyonut'' after ''Zion'') is a nationalist movement that espouses the establishment of, and support for a homeland for the Jewish people centered in the area roughly corresponding to what is known in Je ...

lawyer Marcell Hajdu.''Jews in the Gym: Judaism, Sports, and Athletics''
/ref> He won four Hungarian National Youth Championships. He was a member of the Hungarian fencing team in the 1928 and 1932 Olympics. Petschauer was regarded throughout the late 1920s and early 1930s as one of the world's top fencers. ''Masquerade: Dancing Around Death in Nazi-occupied Hungary'' - Tivadar Soros
/ref> Between 1925 and 1931, at the saber world championships he was three times a silver medalist and three times a bronze medalist.

Olympic career

In Amsterdam in 1928 at the age of 23 he was part of the

gold medal A gold medal is a medal awarded for highest achievement in a non-military field. Its name derives from the use of at least a fraction of gold in form of plating or alloying in its manufacture. Since the eighteenth century, gold medals have bee ...

-winning Hungarian team in

sabre A sabre ( French: �sabʁ or saber in American English) is a type of backsword with a curved blade associated with the light cavalry of the early modern and Napoleonic periods. Originally associated with Central European cavalry such as th ...

, winning all 20 of his competition matches. In the individual sabre competition, Petschauer won the

silver medal A silver medal in sports and other similar areas involving competition is a medal made of, or plated with, silver awarded to the second-place finisher, or runner-up, of contests or competitions such as the Olympic Games, Commonwealth Games, etc ...

. In the

1932 Summer Olympics The 1932 Summer Olympics (officially the Games of the X Olympiad and also known as Los Angeles 1932) were an international multi-sport event held from July 30 to August 14, 1932 in Los Angeles, California, United States. The Games were held duri ...

in Los Angeles, Petschauer was again part of the champion Hungarian sabre team. The Hungarians won the gold medal in team sabre, and Petschauer finished 5th in individual sabre.

Murder

According to legend, Petschauer was arrested by the Nazis in 1943 and sent to a

forced labor camp A labor camp (or labour camp, see spelling differences) or work camp is a detention facility where inmates are forced to engage in penal labor as a form of punishment. Labor camps have many common aspects with slavery and with prisons (especi ...

in Davidovka, Ukraine.''In the Darkroom'' - Susan Faludi
/ref> Some claimed that Petschauer was tortured and murdered under orders of a Hungarian officer, a fellow former Hungarian Olympian named Kálmán Cseh, during his service in a Hungarian-Jewish Forced Labor Battalion. A fellow inmate, Olympic champion wrestler

Károly Kárpáti Károly Kárpáti (also Károly Kellner, born July 2, 1906 in Eger – September 23, 1996 in Budapest) was a Hungarian Olympic wrestling champion of Jewish heritage. Career Károly Kárpáti was born on July 2, 1906 in the Austro-Hungarian ...

, recalled: “The guards shouted: ‘You, Olympic fencing medal winner . . . let’s see how you can climb trees.’ It was midwinter and bitter cold, but they ordered him to undress, then climb a tree. The amused guards ordered him to crow like a rooster, and sprayed him with water. Frozen from the water, he died shortly after.”''Who Betrayed the Jews?: The Realities of Nazi Persecution in the Holocaust'' - Agnes Grunwald-Spier
/ref> A fictionalized account of his life and death were dramatised in the 1999 film ''

Sunshine Sunlight is a portion of the electromagnetic radiation given off by the Sun, in particular infrared, visible, and ultraviolet light. On Earth, sunlight is scattered and filtered through Earth's atmosphere, and is obvious as daylight when th ...

'', starring

Ralph Fiennes Ralph Nathaniel Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes ( ; born 22 December 1962) is an English actor, film producer, and director. A Shakespeare interpreter, he excelled onstage at the Royal National Theatre before having further success at the Royal Shak ...

. Recent research by historians Csaba B. Stenge and Krisztián Ungváry show that according to the records of the Hungarian Royal Army, Petschauer died of typhus in a Soviet POW camp.

Hall of Fame

He was inducted into the

International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame The International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame ( he, יד לאיש הספורט היהודי, translit=Yad Le'ish HaSport HaYehudi) was opened July 7, 1981 in Netanya, Israel. It honors Jewish athletes and their accomplishments from anywhere around ...

in 1985.

Memorial event

The Attila Petschauer Event was begun in 1995 as a memorial to Petschauer by his relative, Dr. Richard Markowitz. It is known across the United States as one of the top sabre events.

References

External links

Olympic recordJewish Sports Legends bio
{{DEFAULTSORT:Petschauer, Attila 1904 births 1943 deaths Deaths from hypothermia Hungarian male sabre fencers Jewish Hungarian sportspeople Jewish male sabre fencers Olympic fencers of Hungary Olympic gold medalists for Hungary Olympic silver medalists for Hungary Olympic medalists in fencing Fencers at the 1928 Summer Olympics Fencers at the 1932 Summer Olympics People condemned by Nazi courts Hungarian civilians killed in World War II International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame inductees Medalists at the 1928 Summer Olympics Medalists at the 1932 Summer Olympics Hungarian people who died in Nazi concentration camps People who died in Davidovka concentration camp Hungarian Jews who died in the Holocaust Hungarian World War II forced labourers Fencers from Budapest