Max H. IPPEN

Austrian-born Max Ippen moved to Czechoslovakia in his youth when his family relocated to Prague to take over the business of his deceased uncle. Ippen worked for the company, which manufactured bank safes among other products, and helped smuggle a significant amount of money to Switzerland during World War II. He posed as a Catholic to hide his Jewish ancestry, but was caught by the Nazis eventually and sent to Auschwitz and Dachau. Although he survived the camps, over eighty members of his extended family did not. While under investigation in Czechoslovakia for collaboration with the Gestapo, he fled to Switzerland and even represented his adopted country in bobsleigh at the 1948 Winter Olympics. He partnered with Eduard Novotný in the two-man, finishing 14th among 16 competitors, and joined Novotný, Ivan Šipajlo, and František Zajíček in the four-man, placing 14th in a field of 15 teams. Ippen soon moved to Austria and remained there for the rest of his life, dying on a business trip to Paris at the age of 51.