Hungarian swim star, Holocaust survivor

Eva Szekely never forgot the Hungarian fascist who, in the winter of 1944, passed over her in a roundup of Jews to be shot on the banks of the Danube River in Budapest. He had one grey eye and one brown, a visage seared into her memory.

As many as 20,000 Hungarian Jews were murdered along the river that winter by the Nazi- backed Arrow Cross Party. More than 400,000 more had been deported to Auschwitz earlier in the year.

Szekely was 17 — a star swimmer despite anti- Semitic laws that had forced her off her team in 1941 — and avoided arrest through the intercession of her father, who ordered her to feign illness as the fascist approached.

“Can’t you see she cannot walk?” she recalled her father pleading. Moreover, her father told the fascist official, “She is the swimming champion of Hungary, and one day you will be happy you saved her life!”

Szekely survived the war in a forced labour program and later in a safe house run by the Swiss where, according to the online Encyclopedia of Jewish Women, she stayed fit by running up and down five flights of steps 100 times a day.

She went on to become one of her country’s greatest swimmers. She won a gold medal in the 200-metre breaststroke at the 1952 Olympic Games in Helsinki, and a silver four years later in the same race in Melbourne.

Szekely, who became known as “Madame Butterfly” for the butterfly style she brought to the breaststroke, died Feb. 29 at her home in Budapest. She was 92.

Szekely was born in Budapest on April 3, 1927.

She made her Olympic debut at the 1948 Games in London, where she placed fourth in the 200- metre breaststroke.

The anti-communist Hungarian Uprising of 1956, ultimately crushed by the Soviet Union, began shortly before Szekely and then-husband Dezso Gyarmati, a Hungarian Olympian regarded as perhaps the best water poloist of his time, had left for the Melbourne Games.

After the games, they went back to Hungary, then briefly defected to the United States before returning home to care for Szekely’s aging parents. Szekely became a pharmacist and a swim coach, with protegés including her daughter, Andrea.

At the 1972 Munich Games, Szekely watched as her daughter received a silver medal in the 100- metre backstroke and a bronze in the 100 butterfly. In 1976, Szekely was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame, as was Gyarmati, from whom she was by then divorced.

In addition to her daughter, survivors include a grandson, who is also a noted Hungarian water poloist, and a great- granddaughter.