Eva Szekely, Who Used Swimming to Survive Holocaust, Dies at 92

Hungarian Eva Szekely, the 1952 Olympic gold medalist in the 200 meter breaststroke, died on Saturday at 92-years old. A rarity for the era, Szekely won her first Olympic gold medal at 25-years old, and four years later took silver in the same 200 breaststroke at 29. She swam in the era where breaststroke looked more like modern-day butterfly.

A 1976 inductee into the International Swimming Hall of Fame, Szekely was part of a dominant era of Hungarian women’s breaststroking in the post-World War II era.

Szekely was a prominent Jewish swimmer before, during, and after the holocaust where between 5 and 6 million Jewish people were killed in Europe, including an estimated 70 percent of the Jewish population in Hungary. In 1941, she was expelled from the Hungarian National Team for being Jewish. Later, in 1944, when members of Hungary’s Arrow Cross party came to round up Jews in her community, her father told the young Hungarian Nazi who arrived first that she was sick, and then that she was a swimming champion of Hungary and that he would later be happy that he saved her life.

“‘Say your name!'” Szekely later recounted what the Nazi shouted at her when he arrived. “He looked at me and I looked at him, said my name and saw that one of his eyes was grey and the other one was brown. And this stayed with me as never before had I seen a man with different colored eyes.

“This is how I stayed alive, that Dad told him I was a swimming champion and he would still remember me.”

The Nazi and the swimmer would have at least one more encounter in their life: Szekely says that after winning a gold medal at a major international swimming competition on Margaret Island in the 50s, that she was given a special prize by the major of the Communist Political Police (AVO), and that this man was the same man who years earlier was convinced to not kill her because she was a swimming champion.

• Watch Szekely’s telling of the story here.

After the war, Szekely resumed her championship swimming career, winning 32 Hungarian titles between 1946 and 1954. In 1947, she won a silver medal at the European Championship in the 200 breaststroke; that same year, she won 3 gold medals at the World University Games. She won 5 more gold medals at the 1952 World University Games.

In 1948, she was 4th in the 200 breaststroke, 5th in the 400 free relay, and 6th in the 400 free. Four years later, she won gold and set an Olympic Record in the 200 breaststroke. Szekely would marry Deszo Gyarmati, who was a 5-time Olympic medalist in water polo (including 3 gold medals) and is one of the most decorated players in the history of the sport. He died in 2013. The couple left for the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne shortly after the Hungarian revolt against Communism began, leaving their young daughter at home in Hungary. The stress is said to have caused Szekely to lose 12 pounds in a week in the lead-up to the Olympics, but she endured for a silver medal in the 200 breast and a 5th-place finish in the 400 free.

Very few swimmers in that era competed in as many Olympic Games as she did.

In 1957, the pair visited Vienna and then defected to the United States. They returned in 1958 to Hungary to care for Szekely’s parents, at which point she retired. Szekely would go on to become a prominent swim coach in Hungary (and her husband a prominent water polo coach), including coaching their daughter Andrea Gyarmati, who won 2 Olympic medals of her own. Like her parents, she too would eventually be inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 1995.

After retiring from swimming Szekely worked as a pharmacist and published several literary works, including a short story entitled “The True, Great Love of My Life in Water.” She also wrote a book called “Only Winners Are Allowed to Cry!” Besides the International Swimming Hall of Fame, Szekely is a member of the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame. Her grandson Mate Hesz, is a World Junior and European Junior Champion in water polo.

Correction: a previous edition said that Szekely’s granddaughter is Liliana Szilagyi. Szilagyi is the granddaughter of Dezso Gyarmati from a second marriage.