Farkas Paneth

Farkas "Vili" "Lupu" Paneth (born March 17 or March 23, 1917 in Cluj , Cluj district ; † June 23, 2009 there ) was a Romanian table tennis player and coach.

Active career

Farkas Paneth was the fourth child of a Jewish - Hungarian working class family from Transylvania . His great-grandfather was Ezekiel ben Joseph Paneth, who had been elected Rabbi of Transylvania in 1823.

Since his parents could no longer afford school at the Angelescu Lyceum, they sent him to a shoemaker's apprenticeship. At the same time, Paneth began playing table tennis at the age of 11 on a tailor's table in the courtyard of his parents' house. There he was discovered by some professional players who invited him to train in the trade workers' club.

In 1932 Paneth was chosen to take part in the Cluj regional championships. Acquaintances paid for the registration fee, Paneth won this competition. In 1933 he joined the newly founded association Societatea Sportivă Uzinele Electrice Cluj and became city and regional champion. In 1934 he became national champion in the junior singles. For lack of money, he had taken the train ride to Bucharest with the ID of a school colleague, since his father was employed by the Romanian state railway company . In 1935 he won the Romanian cup competition and was appointed to the national team.

In 1936 the World Table Tennis Championships took place in Prague . Since Paneth had not yet done military service, he was only allowed to leave the country for a fee of 100,000 lei, which was collected through a public fundraiser. At this time he was also advised to change his name to Lupu Panait , which he refused after consulting his father.

In Prague, Paneth was surprisingly runner-up with the Romanian national team after eight-time world champions Hungary had been defeated 5-0 in the preliminary round. A year later Romania finished eighth with Paneth. In the singles and doubles competitions, he was eliminated early.

In 1939 Paneth was expelled from the national team before the World Cup in Cairo because he was Jewish. In the same year he married the athlete Edita Holender and shortly afterwards began his military service in the artillery regiment of Cluj. The situation for Paneth worsened due to the Second Vienna Arbitration Award on August 30, 1940 , as he was subsequently denied participation in training units and access to the sports hall in Cluj. In the fall of 1942, Paneth was sent to a labor camp in Baia Mare , where he was employed for the Wehrmacht to build roads . In December 1942 the construction crew was sent to the Eastern Front in Ukraine . In October 1943, Paneth ended up in Krakow , where he was forced to work in the ball bearing factory before being deported. During the transport to the Auschwitz concentration camp , he was able to jump off the train and escape. However, he was caught and taken to the Cluj prison along with other deserters. There he found that most of his family had been deported to various concentration camps. On 15 June 1944 he was even in the ghetto of Nyíregyháza sent, but could by jumping out the window of the train that would take the Jews after 15 days in the concentration camp at Auschwitz, free. After that, he first lived for a month under the false name Josef Szilack in Prešov until the Schutzstaffel in Bratislava was arrested and deported to Auschwitz. Since he spoke five languages ​​and identified himself as a table tennis master, he was employed as an assistant to an SS officer named Dietrich, who later helped him return to Bratislava. From there Paneth fled to Budapest , where he was captured again. After a brief incarceration in Mosonyi prison, he was threatened with deportation to Auschwitz. However, he managed to escape from Budapest Ostbahnhof to the Swedish embassy, ​​where he was brought to safety by Raoul Wallenberg under the name Arpad Sos . When he returned to Cluj after the end of the war, he learned that none of the other 65 family members except his sister had survived the Second World War . His wife was shot dead by members of the SS when she had to stop exhausted while walking .

In order to cope with the psychological consequences of the war, Paneth resumed his table tennis career. In 1947 he won the first post-war edition of the Romanian Cup competition. From 1949 he was the player-coach of the Romanian national team.

In 1952 he took part in the World Championships in Bombay under the name Lupu Paneth . In 1952 and 1953 he won the Romanian national championship title in men's doubles (each with Toma Reiter ), in 1952 in mixed (with Ella Zeller-Constantinescu ).

Legendary rally

Paneth's match at the 1936 World Table Tennis Championships against Poland's Aloizy Ehrlich found its way into the record books because his first rally lasted two hours and twelve minutes.

Coaching career

After the end of his active career, Paneth worked from 1959 for the CSM Cluj , which at that time was still called Progresul Cluj , as a coach. At the same time he was in charge of the Romanian national team from 1949 to 1986. During this time his protégés won 16 world championship titles, 33 European championship titles and over 130 national championship titles. With CSM Cluj, he won the European Cup five times (1961, 1964, 1965, 1966 and 1967) and reached the final twice (1962 and 1963). He won his last national championship title with CSM Cluj in 1981. After the death of his second wife in 1986, he retired from coaching.

Late years

In 1987 he met the photographer Iulia, who later became his third wife. In 1997 he wrote a 340 page book on the history of table tennis. Threatened by old-age poverty, Paneth had to sell all the silver and crystal cups, as well as numerous badges and pennants that testified to his sporting career. An appeal with the reference to his sporting merits to the then Minister for Youth and Sport Crin Antonescu initially failed. A law on the compensation of war victims passed by the Romanian parliament in 1999 was only implemented with delay, which is why Paneth was brought to court at the age of 83. In 2004 he received a one-off sum of 8.4 million lei as well as a monthly war compensation of 10 million lei for his sporting achievements.

Honors

• Paneth is an Honored Master of Sport.
• In 1993 he received the Merit Awards ITTF from the International Table Tennis Federation and is so far the only Romanian who has received this honor.
• In 1996 he was made an honorary citizen of the city of Cluj-Napoca.

Filming of his life

In 1999, in the one-hour documentary A Holocaust szemei co-produced by Steven Spielberg , Paneth reported on his fate. This film will be shown at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC .

Results from the ITTF database

Association	event	year	place	country	singles	Double	Mixed	team
ROU	World Championship	1937	to bathe	AUT	last 32	last 64	Scratched	8th
ROU	World Championship	1936	Prague	TCH	last 128	last 16	no participants	2
ROU	World Championship	1952	Bombay	IND	last 32	no participants	last 32

Works

• (with Gheorghe I. Bodea) Paleta și Planeta , 1997 (1st edition), 2003 (2nd edition)

philately

The following postmarks were used by the post office in Cluj-Napoca Romania:

• April 27, 1996: Special postmark depicting Farkas Paneth and Alex Ehrlich .
• December 27, 1993: Machine advertising stamp with the image of Farkas Paneth for the Award of Merit of the ITTF 1993.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Jurnalul Naţional of June 24, 2004 ( Memento of July 18, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ).
2. ^ Evenimentul Zilei of March 9, 2002 ( Memento of June 28, 2009 in the Internet Archive ).
3. ↑ List of the Romanian national champions in men's doubles ( Memento of the original from May 31, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . 
4. ↑ List of the Romanian national champions in mixed ( memento of the original from May 31, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . 
5. ^ Evenimentul Zilei of June 25, 2009 ( Memento of June 28, 2009 in the Internet Archive ).
6. ↑ Foaia Transilvania of June 26, 2009 ( Memento of August 1, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ).
7. ↑ DTS magazine , 1997/12 p. 32.
8. ↑ Page no longer available , search in web archives: Ziua from October 11, 2000 .
9. ↑ ITTF statistics 1 ( Memento of the original from September 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
10. ↑ ITTF statistics 2 ( Memento of the original from March 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed September 13, 2011 
11. ↑ Clujeanul of June 24, 2009 ( Memento of the original of March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed December 29, 2009