SWIMMER FLOGGED

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28224, 12 March 1957, Page 11

SWIMMER FLOGGED

Secret Attack On Hungarian (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) ' Rec. 9 p.m.) LONDON, March 10. The Olympic gold medallist, Deszoe Gyarmati. of Hungary, was flogged with nail-studded whips after he returned from the Olympic Games at Melbourne, the Vienna correspondent of the “News Chronicle” reported. Today he is in Vienna, waiting to go to the United States. Gyarmati, captain of the victorious Hungarian water polo team, fought against the Russians in last year’s revolution and led the Hungarian Olympic team’s Anti - Communist Revolutionary Council. But he and his wife, Eva, also an Olympic swimmer, went back to Hungary because their two-year-old daughter was still in Budapest. At first Gyarmati was treated as a hero. Then he was warned that the Secret Police were collecting evidence against him. A fortnight ago, as he was driving home, a big limousine cut in to him, and forced him to a standstill. Four men jumped out, dragged him from his car, hit him over the head, and forced him into the limousine. In an empty country house eight miles from Budapest, eight men tore off his jacket and shirt and beat him with nail-studded whips. When he came to, he found the door locked. He jumped from the first floor window, crawled to a telephone and called a doctor friend. At 4 a.m. as soon as the curfew was over, he drove his family and parents to the frontier and crossed with forged papers. Gyarmati and other members of the Olympic team now in the West are convinced that the men who flogged him were Russians, the “News Chronicle” said. They recall that when the Soviet team captain greeted Gyarmati in Melbourne, Gyarmati turned away and spat. “Art unsportsmanlike gesture.” said Gyarmati, “but our hearts were aflame at what the Russians were doing to Hungary.”