In a statement posted on its website, the Hungarian Olympic Committee (HOC) announced that Agnes Keleti had passed away on Thursday, a week short of her 104th birthday.
“These 100 years felt to me like 60,” Keleti told The Associated Press on the eve of her 100th birthday in 2021.
“I live well. And I love life. It’s great that I’m still healthy.”
Banned, persecuted for being a Jew
Keleti was born Agnes Klein in Budapest to a Jewish family on January 9, 1921. Keleti got off to a promising start in gymnastics, winning her first Hungarian championship in 1940. However, her career was put on hold later that year after she was banned from all sporting activities for being a Jew.
According to the HOC, Keleti escaped deportation to Nazi death camps, where hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews were killed, by hiding in a village south of Budapest using false identity papers. in the .
Late, successful Olympic career
After the Second World War ended in 1945, she returned to gymnastics, and in 1952 she won her first gold at the Helsinki at the age of 31. At the 1956 Games in Melbourne, she added four more gold medals to her collection.
Emigation to Israel, return to Budapest
Her total of 10 Olympic medals, including the five golds, make her the second-most successful Hungarian athlete of all time, the HOC said.
With the Olympic Games having come on the heels of a bloody Soviet crackdown on an anti-communist uprising in Budapest, Keleti decided against returning to Hungary. A year later, she emigrated to Israel.
However, after the fall of communism in 1990, Keleti frequently visited Hungary and eventually returned to live out her last years in Budapest.
Edited by: Wesley Dockery
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