Born in 1927 in Budapest, Eva Szekely became not only one of the greatest Jewish athletes in the modern era, but is considered by the swimming world to be one of the greatest swimmers of her generation.
In the early 1940s, with anti-Jewish feeling on the rise in Hungary, Szekely was expelled from her local team as a "religious undesirable."
For two years, between 1944 and 1945, she lived with her family in a Swiss-run safe house in Budapest.
She went on to compete in three Olympic Games (4th place in the 200-meter breaststroke in 1948, gold in the same event in 1952 and silver four years later), smashing 10 world records, 5 Olympic records and 101 Hungarian national records along the way.
As a coach, she was no less successful: her daughter, Andrea Gyarmati, won a silver medal at the 1972 Olympics, setting a world record of her own in the 100-meter butterfly.
