Éva explains how she survived a roundup of Jews by Hungary’s Arrow Cross party members in Budapest in winter 1944. A young Hungarian Nazi came to take Eva, but spared her at the last minute due to Eva's father's quick thinking. Years after the war, she encountered the man again, this time as a high-ranking political police officer in then-Communist Hungary.
Éva Székely was born in 1927 in Budapest, Hungary. During the Holocaust, she served in Hungarian forced labor battalions and lived in protected houses in Budapest. Already in the 1940s she was a very talented swimmer, winner of many championships. After the war, she won the gold medal at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki, Finland, and the silver medal at the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Australia.