Sabre, Individual, Men

The last fencing event at the 1932 Olympics was the individual sabre. Although expected to be very exciting, the organizational weaknesses here proved distressing as the final pool lasted nearly six hours. The Hungarians were favored as they dominated sabre fencing in this era, with the 1930-31 world championship having gone to György Piller-Jekelfalussy. Piller-Jekelfalussy won the gold medal, as expected, but the silver went to the surprising Giulio Gaudini of Italy, ahead of Hungary’s Endre Kabos, who narrowly edged out Germany’s Erwin Casmir for bronze.

Hungarian Attila Petschauer had been favored for a medal, but came in fifth. Petschauer, who was Jewish, was arbitrarily arrested by the Nazis in the summer of 1942 and assigned to hard labor in the Davidovka concentration camp, which was effectively a death sentence, and as a prominent prisoner, he was singled out for the harshest treatment. When in January 1943 his former teammate and current overseer Kálmán Cseh von Szent-Katolna identified him as an Olympic champion, Petschauer was beaten with a wire whip until his spine was exposed, until Colonel General Burdenko, chief surgeon of the Red Army, arrived a bit later, and stopped the brutality, but could not save his life. Petschauer was forced to climb a tree naked in the frigid weather, and had cold water sprayed on him. He died shortly thereafter. A documentation of this case appeared in the 1970s in Hungary and Petschauer’s death by torture was the subject of the 1999 movie Sunshine starring Ralph Fiennes.