The Life and Death of Hungary’s Greatest Jewish Fencer

Aug. 23 2024

After two Jewish fencers, Jackie Dubrovich and Maia Weintraub, helped the U.S. women’s foil team (of which they made up half) win a gold medal at the Paris Olympics, this newsletter linked to a fascinating essay about Hungarian Jewish fencing champions from 2000. Of course, the most famous Hungarian Jewish fencer was not an Olympian at all, but Theodor Herzl, whose resignation from an elite fencing club at the University of Vienna over increasing anti-Semitism was a key turning point in his political development.

Dovi Safier was likewise inspired by the Olympics to look into this bit of Jewish history and, in particular, the story of the three-time Hungarian Olympic fencing champion Attila Petschauer. In 1932, Petschauer came to Los Angeles for the Olympics, where, Safier writes, he and his teammates “were greeted like heroes.”

Jews of Hungarian origin came out en masse to greet them and wined and dined them throughout their stay. Many prominent figures in Hollywood at the time were Jewish. Adolph Zukor, one of the three founders of Paramount Pictures, was a Hungarian Jew; William Fox (born Wilhelm Fried Fuchs), founder of Fox Film Corporation, was another.

Petschauer, moonlighting as a newspaper correspondent during the games, found himself both fascinated and bewildered by the peculiarities of America: “The tenth Olympiad is the Olympics of interpreters. Los Angeles echoes with 50 languages, making ancient Babel seem quaint.”

In 1942, Petschauer was part of a Jewish battalion of slave laborers sent to the eastern front. When the High Holy Days came around, he reportedly led the prayers, which he remembered by heart—and then performed a comic impersonation of the Budapest chief rabbi delivering a sermon. He died shortly thereafter from the harsh conditions.

Read more at Mishpacha

More about: Holocaust, Hungarian Jewry, olympics, Sports

Egypt Is Trapped by the Gaza Dilemma It Helped to Create

Feb. 14 2025

Recent satellite imagery has shown a buildup of Egyptian tanks near the Israeli border, in violation of Egypt-Israel agreements going back to the 1970s. It’s possible Cairo wants to prevent Palestinians from entering the Sinai from Gaza, or perhaps it wants to send a message to the U.S. that it will take all measures necessary to keep that from happening. But there is also a chance, however small, that it could be preparing for something more dangerous. David Wurmser examines President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s predicament:

Egypt’s abysmal behavior in allowing its common border with Gaza to be used for the dangerous smuggling of weapons, money, and materiel to Hamas built the problem that exploded on October 7. Hamas could arm only to the level that Egypt enabled it. Once exposed, rather than help Israel fix the problem it enabled, Egypt manufactured tensions with Israel to divert attention from its own culpability.

Now that the Trump administration is threatening to remove the population of Gaza, President Sisi is reaping the consequences of a problem he and his predecessors helped to sow. That, writes Wurmser, leaves him with a dilemma:

On one hand, Egypt fears for its regime’s survival if it accepts Trump’s plan. It would position Cairo as a participant in a second disaster, or nakba. It knows from its own history; King Farouk was overthrown in 1952 in part for his failure to prevent the first nakba in 1948. Any leader who fails to stop a second nakba, let alone participates in it, risks losing legitimacy and being seen as weak. The perception of buckling on the Palestine issue also resulted in the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. President Sisi risks being seen by his own population as too weak to stand up to Israel or the United States, as not upholding his manliness.

In a worst-case scenario, Wurmser argues, Sisi might decide that he’d rather fight a disastrous war with Israel and blow up his relationship with Washington than display that kind of weakness.

Read more at The Editors

More about: Egypt, Gaza War 2023