Janos GARAY

In addition to his three Olympic medals, János Garay was the 1925 European Champion in individual sabre and was Hungarian national sabre champion in 1923. As a Jew, János was deported to the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp in 1944. There he was a prominent detainee and a Nazi hostage in their negotiations with the Soviets. He was kept in a very small bunker and died in 1945 as “death case # 14271,” his death officially declared as due to cardiac insufficiency. Garay was the father of Juan Garay, later called Juan Garay after he had emigrated to Argentina, who competed at the 1948 Olympics as a swimmer. He was the father-in-law of Valéria Gyenge, who later moved to Canada and became a famous photographer.