Hungarian legend: It
is doubtful that the dozens of tourists who inhabited the Asian food eatery on one of the most beautiful and central streets of the Hungarian capital, Budapest, knew how to guess that in the house above them lives the oldest Olympic legend in the modern history of the Olympic Games.
It is doubtful whether they know that she returned here, to her childhood neighborhood, after more than 60 years in the State of Israel, and even more so if they have any idea that this is a 101-and-a-half-year-old woman, as she takes care to point out with a smile.
It's hard to hide the excitement as we take the elevator to Agnes Celtic's home.
Who has not heard of Celtic?
Olympic champion at the 1952 Olympic Games in Helsinki and also in 1956. She has ten Olympic medals, including five gold, and to all this must of course be added the World Championships in Rome, 1954.
It is ranked 10th in the history of gymnastics in the Olympic Games, and 11th in the history of the Olympic Games in general.
She is considered by many to be the greatest gymnast in the Olympics, a pioneer in everything related to women's gymnastics in the world and the first star of the gymnastics industry, which still serves as a magnet for fans from all over the world.
Most of them, apparently, did not see her gymnast live at all, but rather belatedly discovered her glorious history.
The noise of the children from the nearby playground, and the famous Ferris wheel in the beating heart of the city, give us a chance to remember Celtic's childhood, for here she grew up and here she first fell in love with sports and music.
She was born into an established family, with a father who was a role model for her, and took her to row the Danube on weekends.
She started exercising at the age of four, but her first love was probably the cello.
Even now she receives us in her apartment as she sits on a chair and plays an imaginary piece and another piece, all from the head, as if she is still the girl who thought gymnastics would be the background music for the cello, and not the other way around.
"She remembers her early childhood, gymnastics and cello very well," her son, Rafael Biru Celtic, tells us.
He looks younger than his age.
This is how it is when you have great genetics.
"If you ask her other things, you will see that there has been a change in her memory."
In the last year and a half, after she fell and had to have surgery on her leg, Celtic's condition has deteriorated.
But anyone who knows her knows that this is not what will stop her, even if it is now a little difficult for her to move, and the prolonged sitting at home due to the corona has affected her mood.
Agnes Celtic with our correspondent Adi Rubinstein and Israeli Ambassador to Hungary Yaakov Hadas, Photo: Israel Today
Hungary is a member of the Moshe religion
Looking at the story of her life outside the sports arena, it's hard to believe that this woman went through what she went through and she's still here, smiling and basting from every moment she's had on earth.
When the persecution of the Jews began, Ficti married a famous Hungarian athlete named Istvan Sarkan.
The marriage saved her from the concentration camps, and allowed her to continue practicing.
The two have been married for five years.
During the occupation, she adopted the identity of the family's Christian housekeeper, Johash Pirushka, and lived as a maid: "As a Jew, I could not participate in any competition."
She then worked as an ammunition factory worker, dreaming of returning to exercise, but her life revolved around the horrors of war.
"We would dig trenches for the bodies," she says.
"I saw things I did not want to remember."
Linoy Ashram appears on the screen.
Celtic knows that she is the greatest Israeli gymnast of all time, and Rafael says that they watched her together at the Olympic Games in Tokyo.
Celtic smiles when talking about Linoy, and believe us it is no small achievement, Photo: EFP
Like many of the Jews in the Hungarian community, who defined themselves before and after the war as "Hungarians of the Moshe religion," Celtic is not angry with the Hungarians.
She well remembers April 9, 1944 - the day the Hungarian government deposited 300,000 Hungarian Jews as a deposit for the Germans.
Five days later, Adolf Eichmann decided to destroy Hungarian Jewry.
In the quick calculation he declared before his oppressed comrades, within two months Hungarian Jewry was to disappear.
54 days later 450,000 Hungarians were sent to their deaths.
The dry statistics show that at that time a Hungarian Jew was murdered every 11 seconds.
90 percent of Hungarian Jewry was exterminated, and every second Jew murdered was from Budapest.
Celtic survived this inferno with the help of sports.
Like many Hungarian Jews, choosing sports was for her the way to choose life and also to forgive, but mostly to reintegrate into a society that sought to admire her.
The thought that Celtic chose to proudly represent the country that destroyed, among other things, her father and uncles, is almost inconceivable, but what was in the past should remain in the past, otherwise the nightmares will return of their own accord.
Her mother and sister, by the way, were saved by the Righteous Among the Nations, Raoul Wallenberg.
Celtic Agnes in photography from the days of the Olympic Games.
It is impossible to imagine such achievements today, Photo: AP
"There is still power"
I arrive at Celtic's house together with the Israeli Ambassador to Hungary, Yaakov Hadas Handelsman.
In collaboration with the Israeli Embassy, I put on an exhibition in Budapest last weekend in honor of the greatest Hungarian Jewish athletes of all time, Celtic of course among them.
Before the opening event, when we ask to give her a scale panel of her picture from the exhibition with a dedication from the ambassador, Hadas tells me "shake her hand".
I reach out, and Celtic pulls me tightly to her: "There's still power" she winks.
And really her tough press, a reminder of her great days as an athlete.
"Even two years ago and a year ago when I shook her hand, nothing changed. The same power," Hadas smiles.
Her house is full of people.
Two traditional therapists take care of everything for her, and especially take care of turning on the TV, which broadcasts YouTube videos of all-time gymnastics competitions.
A few minutes after we enter, Linoy Ashram appears on the screen.
Celtic knows that she is the greatest Israeli gymnast of all time, and Rafael says that they watched her together at the Olympic Games in Tokyo.
Celtic smiles when talking about Linoy, and believe us it's not a trivial matter.
In terms of the gymnast and the tough coach, this is no small achievement.
Her gymnasts at the Wingate Institute, in the 1960s, remember a coach who often scolded and did not give up any accuracy on and off the mat.
When she would return home after training, Rafael recalled, she would be upset about the Israeli "deal" and the fact that Israeli gymnastics lags behind the Hungarian.
It's hard not to appreciate the tremendous revolution Celtic has made in the gymnastics industry.
At the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, at the age of 31, Celtic won four medals: a gold medal in the ground exercise, a silver medal in the team multi-event competition and two bronze medals - in the graded parallel bars and in the group apparatus.
In addition, she finished fourth in the beam exercise, and sixth in the individual medley competition.
At the 1954 World Championships in Rome, Celtic won three medals, one of each: gold for the parallel bars, silver for the team competition and bronze for the beam.
On top of that, she finished in fourth place in the ground exercise.
At the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, at the age of 35, Celtic won six medals.
Four golds - three personalities (for the graded parallel bars, the beam and the ground, the latter jointly with Larissa Latina, her main competitor in the Olympics), and one for a group apparatus exercise, and two silver medals, in a personal multi-team competition and a multi-team competition.
It is impossible to imagine such achievements today, which is perhaps the reason why dozens of fan letters from around the world come to the homes of Celts every day.
A gymnastics teacher from New Haven asks you to sign the attached photos "for the sake of her young fans," and also attaches a few dollars "that you will have to airmail send us back."
In Japan it is a phenomenon in general, and every day she receives from Japanese fans pictures of herself exercising with a request to sign.
"Your image is worth the money," some of them wrote, "and you can help us encourage activity in the gymnastics industry in our community."
And so it went on.
Every day Raphael sorts the letters and signs his mother, an activity that takes at least an hour.
Celtic stamp itself.
"I want her to sign in Hebrew for you," he smiles and Celtic winks at me.
It's hard to overstate the respect one has in Hungary for the Olympic athlete.
On her 100th birthday, at 20:00 in the evening - the peak of Hungarian prime-time - the President of the State, Victor Urban, appeared on the main channel, and greeted: "Throughout history "Honorable. Agnes Celtic is this heroine."
After Urban's blessing, the blessing of former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was also broadcast, and immediately afterwards a special broadcast evening was dedicated to the Celts.
In 2017, when she received the Israel Prize, she says, Naftali Bennett, then the Minister of Education, approached her and told her: "You are a legend, and you live among us. You have changed everything we knew about sports education."
Agnes and her five gold medals, Photo: AP
"Israel and Hungary are home"
Shortly before the corona plague broke out in our lives, Celtic left Israel to join her son Raphael in Hungary.
She's not interested in talking about it, and Raphael also answers a little ashamed.
"What to do," he says, "because she is an Olympic legend in Hungary she is entitled to a reasonable pension, and a pension that allows her to live with dignity for the rest of her life."
And in Israel?
Well, with us the attitude to sports is a little different, and so is the attitude to legends.
"I'm glad we brought her here before the plague, because she also returned to her house, but we also kept her house in Herzliya. As soon as possible, I would be happy for Mom to return to Israel one more time, for one last visit. We have many friends there who have not seen her since the Corona. "For Mother, both Israel and Hungary have always been home."
Family friend in Israel, Chaya Halperin - a legend in her own right - makes sure that her teacher, who changed Israeli gymnastics forever, is remembered and remembered: "She is the mother of this industry in Israel," says Halperin.
"With the first money she received at Maccabiah, she made sure that they bought gym equipment and equipment, and actually founded the industry in Israel."
Indeed, in recent years it seems that in Israel, too, there has been a change in the commemoration of Celtic's activities.
Thus, for example, the Israeli gymnastics championship bears its name.
"On her 100th birthday we went down to the Danube, and we did a party for her, and she made her famous spaghetti. Yes, even at the age of 100," Rafael smiles.
"I do not know if it will happen again, although both the Hungarians and the Israelis are sure that it will. After all, it is the great Celtic Agnes."
"Mom, show them what you can do," he says, and Celtic lifts her legs, recovering from the surgery, and performs a number movement.
"I do not feel 101 years old, the sport preserves me."
When she makes an effort, she is still able to speak Hebrew, but very quickly prefers to return to Hungarian.
"Life has taught me one thing," she says.
"If you want to achieve something, you have to fight for it in the hardest way possible. I want to wish the readers of 'Israel Today' good health and longevity. Eat healthy, do sports and enjoy life. My heart will always be with you."
shishabat@israelhayom.co.il
Were we wrong?
Fixed!
If you found an error in the article, we'll be happy for you to share it with us