Attila Petschauer
Template:Short description Template:Eastern name order Template:Infobox sportsperson
Attila Petschauer (14 December 1904 – 30 January 1943) was a Hungarian Olympic champion sabre fencer of Jewish heritage.[1]
Fencing career
Petschauer was born in Budapest, and was Jewish.[2][3][4]
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 lawyer Marcell Hajdu.[5] He won four Hungarian National Youth Championships.[5]
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.[6][7] Between 1925 and 1931, at the saber world championships he was three times a silver medalist and three times a bronze medalist.[8]
Olympic career
In Amsterdam in 1928 at the age of 23 he was part of the gold medal-winning Hungarian team in sabre, winning all 20 of his competition matches. In the individual sabre competition, Petschauer won the silver medal.[9][5]
In the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, Petschauer was again part of the champion Hungarian sabre team.[5] The Hungarians won the gold medal in team sabre, and Petschauer finished 5th in individual sabre.[9]
Murder
Petschauer was arrested by the Nazis in 1943 and sent to a forced labor camp in Davidovka, Reichskommissariat Ukraine.[10][6][11][12]
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.[13][11] A fellow inmate, Olympic champion wrestler Károly Kárpáti, 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, and 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.”[14][11][15][16]
A fictionalized account of his life and death was dramatised in the 1999 film Sunshine, starring Ralph Fiennes.[9][17]
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.[18]
Hall of Fame
He was inducted into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 1985.[13]
Memorial event
The Attila Petschauer Event was begun in 1995 as a memorial to Petschauer by his relative, Dr. Richard Markowitz.[15][19] It is known across the United States as one of the top sabre events.[20]
See also
References
External links
Template:Footer Olympic Champions Fencing Team Sabre Men
- ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
- ↑ The International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame - Joseph M. Siegman
- ↑ Day by Day in Jewish Sports History - Bob Wechsler
- ↑ Encyclopedia of Jews in Sports - Bernard Postal, Jesse Silver, Roy Silver
- ↑ a b c d Jews in the Gym: Judaism, Sports, and Athletics
- ↑ a b Masquerade: Dancing Around Death in Nazi-occupied Hungary - Tivadar Soros
- ↑ Jews and the Olympic Games: the clash between sport and politics: with a ... - Paul Taylor
- ↑ By the Sword: A History of Gladiators, Musketeers, Samurai, Swashbucklers ... - Richard Cohen
- ↑ a b c Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
- ↑ Not Just a Game - Doug Zipes
- ↑ a b c In the Darkroom - Susan Faludi
- ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
- ↑ a b Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
- ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
- ↑ a b Who Betrayed the Jews?: The Realities of Nazi Persecution in the Holocaust - Agnes Grunwald-Spier
- ↑ Jewish Jocks: An Unorthodox Hall of Fame
- ↑ London, Europe and the Olympic Games: European Perspectives
- ↑ https://www.academia.edu/35429986/Olimpiai_%C3%A9remszerz%C5%91k_trag%C3%A9di%C3%A1ja_a_Donn%C3%A1l_Petschauer_Attila_%C3%A9s_Sz%C3%A9kely_Andr%C3%A1s_mint_zsid%C3%B3_munkaszolg%C3%A1latosok_a_magyar_2._hadseregn%C3%A9l_Tragedy_of_Olympic_Medalists_at_the_River_Don_Attila_Petschauer_and_Zolt%C3%A1n_Sz%C3%A9kely_as_Jewish_Labour_Workers_at_the_Hungarian_2nd_Army_Seregszemle_2016_1.pp.108-114_ and https://index.hu/velemeny/olvir/2013/01/23/a_munkaszolgalat_embertelen_de_tulzo_mozgo_vesztohelynek_nevezni/
- ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
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- 1904 births
- 1943 deaths
- Deaths from hypothermia
- Hungarian male sabre fencers
- Jewish Hungarian sportspeople
- Jewish sabre fencers
- Olympic fencers for 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
- 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
- 20th-century Hungarian sportsmen
- Pages with script errors