Agnes Keleti, Holocaust survivor and oldest living Olympic gold medallist, dies at 103
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The Hungarian Olympic Committee said that the five-time Olympic champion escaped deportation to Nazi death camps before a historic run to become one of the greatest gymnasts of all time, including four gold medals at Melbourne 1956. Agnes Keleti, a Holocaust survivor and the oldest living Olympic medal winner, has died. She was 103.
![[Keleti, former Olympic gold medal winning gymnast poses for a picture at her home in Budapest]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/02/11/2025-01-02T095344Z_1138007004_RC2SZT949JT0_RTRMADP_3_OLYMPICS-HUNGARY-KELETI.jpg)
Keleti died Thursday morning in Budapest, the Hungarian state news agency reported. She was hospitalized in critical condition with pneumonia on Dec. 25. She won a total of 10 Olympic medals in gymnastics, including five golds, for Hungary at the 1952 Helsinki Games and the 1956 Melbourne Games. She overcame the loss of her father and several relatives in the Holocaust to become one of the most successful Jewish Olympic athletes.
“These 100 years felt to me like 60,” Keleti told The Associated Press on the eve of her 100th birthday. “I live well. And I love life. It’s great that I’m still healthy.”. Born Ágnes Klein in 1921 in Budapest, her career was interrupted by World War II and the cancellation of the 1940 and 1944 Olympics. Forced off her gymnastics team in 1941 because of her Jewish ancestry, Keleti went into hiding in the Hungarian countryside, where she survived the Holocaust by assuming a false identity and working as a maid.
Her mother and sister survived the war with the help of famed Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, but her father and other relatives perished at Auschwitz, among the more than half a million Hungarian Jews killed in Nazi death camps and by Hungarian Nazi collaborators.
