Károly Kárpáti was born Károly Kellner to a Jewish family in Eger, northeast Hungary and he was the man who deprived Adolf Hitler from celebrating Germany’s first gold medal at the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games by defeating German titleholder Wolfgang Ehrl.
“They (the Germans) have been making preparations for this (victory), he was supposed to march to Hitler flanked by a row of SS. They even pre-printed postcards with the inscription Wolfgang Ehrl, Olympic Champion. Well, I defeated him,” Kárpáti said in an interview in 1992.
At the end, Kárpáti was so exhausted, his teammates carried him outside in their arms to give him fresh air.
“When they took me outside the sports hall to get some fresh air, I noticed a line of SS soldiers. I spoke good German, so I asked them what is happening.”
The Chancellor is leaving before the awarding ceremony – the answer came. So I can say that not only have I won on the carpet, but that Hitler also suffered a defeat at my hands
During the Holocaust, Kárpáti – on account of his sports fame – was spared from persecution, but was ultimately arrested and sent to a labor camp in Nadvirna (earlier part of Poland, now in Ukraine). But he survived and died in 1996 at the age of 90.
