Fencing

Josef Roman Kantor was born in 1912 in Lodz, Poland, and moved to Paris, where he took up fencing
Josef Roman Kantor was born in 1912 in Lodz, Poland, and moved to Paris, where he took up fencing. Kantor returned to Poland in 1934, and two years later, formed part of the Polish fencing team at the Berlin Olympics in 1936.  In 1938 he won the Scandinavian championships, and was also Polish fencing champion.  After the occupation of Poland in 1939, he fled to Lvov and in 1940, won the Soviet fencing championship.  On 22 June 1941, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, reaching Lvov on 29 June.  After Lvov was occupied, Kantor was arrested, and deported to the Majdanek extermination camp.  He was murdered there in 1943.
Attila Petschauer fencing in competition, Amsterdam, 1928
Attila Petschauer fencing in competition, Amsterdam, 1928.
Attila Petschauer was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1904. He was an Olympic fencer and won the team gold medal and a personal silver medal in the 1928 Amsterdam Olympic games and the team gold medal in the 1932 Los Angeles Olympic games.
In 1943 Petschauer was murdered in a concentration camp by a camp officer who had previously been his teammate in the Olympics.
Petschauer’s story inspired István Szabó’s film Sunshine.
View the Page of Testimony submitted by his cousin.
Otto Hercshmann

Advocate Dr. Otto Herschmann was born in 1877 in Vienna, and was an outstanding sportsman in the fields of fencing and swimming, also serving as chairman of the Austrian Olympic Committee.  At the first Olympic Games held in 1896 in Athens, Herschmann won the silver medal in the 100m freestyle swim category.  Herschmann also participated in the second Olympic Games in Athens in 1906, and at the Stockholm Olympics of 1912, he won the silver medal as part of the Austrian fencing team.  When he won at Stockholm, he was also serving as chairman of the Austrian Olympic Committee, a position he held until 1914.  Between the years 1914-1932, he was president of the Austrian Union of Swimming Clubs.  Herschmann was the first sportsman in history to win Olympic medals in two different sports, and one of the only individuals who ever achieved this feat.

On 14 June 1942, a deportation train left Vienna, reaching the Sobibor extermination camp two days later.  One of the deportees was Otto Herschmann.  All the Jews on this deportation were murdered on arrival.