Hungary came in third in the medal count in the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki, Finland. The stories of their golden female swim team shows the struggles they faced to get their gold. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
This is a big colorful stamp of the type so common in eastern Europe during the cold war. What to me makes it rise above the average is the pose of the swimmers mid dive. It shows the athleticism and strength required to compete with the best in the world. By showing as a generic athlete and without any national team markings, it hints at what the sorority of the best must be like.
Helsinki was awarded the 1952 summer games after their previous would be Olympics was cancelled in 1940. It marked the debut of the USSR, the PRC, Indonesia and the return of Germany and Japan to the Olympics. The medal count had the USA in first, the USSR in second, and Hungary in third. There was a funny bit of fake news out of Russia at the time when authorities announced that Russia won the games. When it was pointed out that USA had won the most medals, the Russians corrected kind of saying now that USSR and USA had tied under a point system that they invented.
The first Hungarian swimmer from 1952 we will talk about is Katalin Szoke. Author’s note: I have wrote the swimmers names in western style, in Hungarian, family name comes first. She won two golds in 100 meter freestyle events. She competed again without success in the 1956 games. Her father was a policeman and a member of the then right wing party. After the war the communist government sentenced him to death in absentia. He had run to Argentina. Katalin took her mother’s maiden name to sever ties to him and after divorcing a member of the water polo team married another teammate of her first husband and defected to the USA. She died in 2017.
Judit Temes won a bronze in the 100 meter freestle and a gold as part of the 100 meter relay team. She was Jewish and remained in Hungary. She died in 2012.
Valeria Gyenge won gold in the 400 meter freestyle event. She again competed in the 1956 games and afterword defected to Canada with her future husband who was on the water polo team. Her father in law was a 1928 gold medal Olympian in Fencing that later died in a Nazi concentration camp. She is still alive at age 85 in Canada.
Eva Novac won four medals in freestyle and breaststroke. This includes a bronze from the 1948 games in London. She later defected to Belgium where she died in 2005.
Eva Szekely won a gold in 1952 and a silver in the 1956 games. She is also a Jew and credits her surviving the Holocaust because she already at a young age held the national speed swimming record. She also married and divorced a member of the water polo team. Her daughter competed and won in the 1968 and 1972 Olympics after being coached by her mother. Her daughter slightly broke with tradition by marrying and divorcing a member of the canoeing team. Eva is still alive in Hungary at age 91 and has authored 3 books about her experiences.
One can see that from war to Holocaust to the repression of 1956 the kind of struggles faced by the Hungarian athletes of the day. That they overcome to the extent of such a small country coming in 3rd in the medal count is extraordinary. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.