The Fencers: A Cold War Escape Memoir

by Geza Tatrallyay

Genres: Biographical

Synopsis

The Fencers is the third volume in a trilogy of autobiographical Cold War Escape stories. It is both an immigrant's narrative of seeking a better life and a brighter future and a sports memoir focusing on two Olympic fencers, one representing Canada, the other Romania. Most of all, it is the account of the author's friendship with Paul Szabó, a Romanian-Hungarian epée fencer, Szabó's love for a young woman he married and her tragic death. In Romania, the country Paul represented in the 1976 Olympics, Nicolae Ceaușescu was then President. Mismanagement, rampant corruption, mass surveillance, brutality and human rights abuses were rampant. Ceaușescu's Stalinist secret police, the Securitate, was particularly notorious for purges, oppression and restrictions of freedom of the almost two million Hungarians, like Szabó, who had lived in Romania for centuries. And it was in this context that Paul, only twenty-one at the time takes the difficult decision to stay in Canada, with the prospect of never seeing his parents and homeland again. He approaches his friend, Tatrallyay, who against all odds helps him defect to Canada and start a new life in his chosen country. The Fencers is an exciting true story of courage, friendship, love, happiness, success and tragedy.

Release date: March 9, 2019

Publisher: Deux Voiliers Publishing

Print pages: 121

Sample

Chapter 1

Fencing. The notice on the bulletin board said fencing classes would start on Tuesday after school at four o'clock. Come and learn what real swordsmanship is all about. With Maître Julius Alpár, the famous Hungarian Olympic fencing coach.

It was September 1960 and I had just begun my first year at U.T.S., the University of Toronto Schools, a top academic school in Toronto associated with the University, which used it to train teachers. My family was still relatively new to Canada; we had escaped from Hungary and immigrated just four years earlier. My father’s brother and sister had both come to this land of the future after the Second World War, and my parents had been desperate to follow and leave Stalinist oppression in Hungary to give their children a decent life in a free country. So during the chaos of the Revolution in 1956, we tried to leave three times, and were caught twice, succeeding to get to Austria on the third attempt after a harrowing escape. I wrote down the story of our escape much later so that my family would have it, and it is now a book, For the Children.

Canada was a very welcoming country then, as it still is, and first we went to live in a small town, Peterborough, Ontario, where my uncle Gabriel worked and lived with his new Canadian family. We moved to Toronto two years later, at the urging of Béla Szandtner, one of my father’s friends from Hungary who had come to Canada soon after the end of the war, to join him in the import business he had started. I first attended St. Anselm’s, a Catholic school in Leaside, where we lived close to my father’s place of work. But when I was ready to go into Grade 7, which is when U.T.S. started, my parents wanted me to sit for the entrance exams. It was this school that the sons of my father’s partner were attending, and it was they who strongly recommended it to us as the best school in Toronto. And my parents, as new Canadians, listened to the advice of their friends who had been in the new country for a lot longer. So they were very pleased that I managed to get into this first-class school. As was I, because by this time, I was somewhat bored with the parochial Catholic teaching at St. Anselm’s and keen to try new things.

I was rather intrigued and surprised though, to learn that my new school would offer fencing along with all the more Canadian sports, such as hockey and football, and even more so, that the coach was Hungarian.

I brought the subject up over dinner.

“Alpár Gyula!” my father exclaimed, standing up. He, too, was very surprised. “Amazing! Alpár was Professor of Physical Education and Fencing at the Hungarian Military Academy before the war. The famous Ludovika.”

“Where Loránt went?” my mother asked. Loránt was my father’s sister’s husband, and after the war, they had ended up first in Algiers and then in Montreal, coming to Canada in the footsteps of Gabriel, my uncle.

“Yes. I am sure he knew Alpár. But more importantly, Alpár trained many Hungarian Olympic medal winners. Come to think of it, Géza, he must have known your grandfather from the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. Alpár coached the Hungarian saber team in Berlin, where, as you know, Apa was the team doctor. Yes, I remember now, he thought very highly of him.”

“You should definitely sign up for the sport, Géza,” my mother said. “Especially if you can have such an excellent teacher. And, of course, you should mention your grandfather ...”

“Besides, fencing is Hungary’s national sport,” my father added. “And I did it in my youth. Foil. It was a lot of fun, I can tell you.”

I DID SHOW UP in the gym after classes the following Tuesday. Yes, partly because after the discussion around the dinner table I was curious to see who this famous ‘Olympic’ coach was, but more so because fencing had a romantic aura associated with it. Still not in my teens at the time, I had visions of emulating Ferenc Rákoczi, the swashbuckling Prince of Transylvania who became a Hungarian hero by leading a rebellion against the Austrians in the early part of the eighteenth century. Or dreams of teaming up—much as d’Artagnan did—with the Three Musketeers, with Athos, Porthos and Aramis. I had read the Dumas novel twice, first in Hungarian and then in English. Or simply of rescuing fair damsels from dragons.

And my father’s mention of Apa and the Olympics had brought back memories of my maternal grandfather and namesake, who had passed away that very summer. Tragically, just before finally getting the exit permit from the Communist government in Hungary that would have allowed him and my grandmother to visit us in Canada for the first time since we escaped in 1956 during the Revolution. I never saw my grandfather again after we left Hungary when I was seven years old.

Baitz Géza had been the official doctor of the Hungarian team during the 1936 Berlin Olympics. And, as a young child, I had fond memories of sitting on his lap as we flipped through a large, fading red canvas-bound book on the Berlin Games, with the Olympic rings engraved in gold on the cover. We would be looking for the two or three photos in which my grandfather appeared, debonair with his close-trimmed moustache, dressed in a white linen suit, posing with different sets of athletes.

But my favorite pictures in the book were those action shots of Jesse Owens, the great African-American track and field star who so upset Adolf Hitler by winning four gold medals. And of course, those of the Hungarian fencers, Kabos Endre and Elek Ilona winning gold in individual saber and women’s foil fencing along with the entire saber team. In fact, Kabos’ two golds must have irked Hitler too, since he was also Jewish.

These phenomenal stars were my idols, and here was my opportunity to try to emulate them in my own small way. Although the Olympics were another thing altogether. Let alone gold medals.

THE FIRST LESSON did not go well. Alpár was an excellent coach, and started out with the basics. But after all the build-up by my parents, I was disappointed to find that training for the sport was fundamentally boring and a lot of hard work. For one, all the moves were so unnatural and difficult. A lot of moving backward and forward with knees bent, holding the arms in rather uncomfortable, strained positions. I was completely exhausted after that first experience; all my muscles ached and I considered quitting. But the Maître encouraged me, and his presence kept reminding me of my childhood heroes, especially the Olympic ones. Also, I found it rather agreeable—although somewhat weird—to have someone speak Hungarian to me at the school. So I stuck with it from one training session to the next.

For the fourth lesson, Maître Alpár brought another man with him. Balding and distinguished looking, this gentleman was also suited up with the heavy fencing vest and above- the-elbow glove typically worn by fencing masters.

What, two professional coaches for the seven or eight beginners who regularly showed up Tuesday and Thursday afternoons at this high school? And Olympians, at that! Wasn’t that overkill? I asked myself.

But then Coach Alpár introduced the newcomer. “This is your new coach, Maître Imre Hennyey. Maître Hennyey is taking over from me as the trainer for the University of Toronto team and has agreed to teach at your school as well. He is an excellent fencer and coach, and was on the Hungarian Olympic team in 1948 and 1952, as an epéeist. You will do very well with him. As for me, I have been invited to teach at the University of California in Berkeley.

Maître Hennyey is taking over from me starting today.” Coach Alpár saluted with his foil and signaled to the new fencing master to lead us in the communal warm-up exercises.

That evening, I recounted this change in my fencing fortunes to my parents.

“Well, I have heard of Hennyey Imre,” my father said. “Yes, he too, was an Olympian and a coach with a strong reputation. But he is no replacement for Alpár. Alpár was unique, even in Hungary. Shame. But no matter. Stick with it, son.”

IN MY OPINION, albeit, I admit, that of a total neophyte, Imre Hennyey was every bit as good a coach as Julius Alpár, maybe even better. Perhaps not as famous as his countryman in the old snobby Hungarian circles, but I found him more inspiring and engaged with us, and technically very competent. For the next seven years, until I graduated from grade thirteen at U.T.S. in 1967, I worked with Maître Hennyey. Initially, I took just the twelve or so lessons a year offered at the high school and only at foil, the so-called training weapon. But after the first two years, Maître Hennyey decided I was getting mature enough to work with him over at the University of Toronto. So I would go over to Hart House where the university team’s fencing salle was located whenever I could, and got extra lessons from him. And Maître Hennyey switched me to epée, a weapon much more suited to me, I found, and also probably to my teacher, since that was the discipline he had fenced in the Olympic Games. Occasionally, he even had one of the university’s epéeists fence against me, which, of course, for a mere high school boy, was a real thrill and honour.

Epée is the derivative of the rapier, the original dueling weapon. It is based on the concept of first blood, so there are no right-of-way rules as in foil and saber. Whoever lands the touch first, scores. There is also the concept of a double touch, where both fencers are awarded a point if they score within milliseconds of each other. Moreover, in epée, the whole body is the target, with hits to the wrist and the toe being classic ways to score since those are the closest parts of the opponent’s body. It is also heavier than the other two weapons, and the point is calibrated so that the touch registers electronically only if it lands with a force of at least seven hundred and fifty grams. I often wondered how they calculated that this much force is required to draw blood; the experiments must have been gruesome and painful. In epée fencing, it also helps to be tall and lanky, which suited me perfectly.

Already with the foil, I had started to do well in some external junior meets, but with Maître Hennyey’s solid coaching, I also began to win a few epée competitions, again mostly around Ontario.