Attila Petschauer

Attila Petschauer (14 December 1904 – 30 January 1943) was a Hungarian Olympic champion sabre fencer of Jewish heritage.

Fencing career

Petschauer was born in Budapest, 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 lawyer Marcell Hajdu. He won four Hungarian National Youth Championships. 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-winning Hungarian team in sabre, winning all 20 of his competition matches. In the individual sabre competition, Petschauer won the silver medal.

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 fictionalized account of his life and death was dramatised in the 1999 film Sunshine, starring Ralph Fiennes.

Hall of Fame He was inducted into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame 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.