George Piller
This Archive has produced a feature length documentary on the amazing life of this great man and I hope you will make an effort to watch our film. In short, George Piller was an unmatched fencer and coach. Winner of multiple World Championships and the 1932 Olympics, Aldo Nadi, usually reticent to praise others, called Piller one of the two best sabre fencers of the first half of the 20th Century. A military man, Piller was appointed to the Hungarian Royal Guard for his Olympic victory and also began a long career as Hungarian Team Captain and coach for the fencing teams fielded by Hungary at international competitions.
READ MORE...Near the end of World War Two, he was captured with his unit by Soviet troops and was fortunate to be recognized and pulled from a train that would have taken him to exile in Siberia. Unpopular with the Hungarian communist government due to his connection to the Royal Guard, Piller left the military and began a full time coaching career, leading international teams to victory after victory.
Offered an opportunity to defect to the US during the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne, Piller and half of his Gold Medal winning sabre team took the offer. Piller settled in San Francisco and, with the aid of the local Hungarian community, opened the Pannonia Athletic Club. The club produced numerous National Champions from the start, but sadly Piller was only to enjoy life in California a few short years, succumbing to throat cancer in 1960.
Articles
George Piller comes to San Francisco
Gyorgy Jekelfalussy Piller has gone down in history as one of the most successful competitors and coaches. If his name is unfamiliar, let me give you a brief run-down. He competed for Hungary in the 1928 Olympics on the Foil Team and reached the semi-finals,...
Daniel Magay, Part 1
Daniel Magay was a member of the Olympic Gold medal winning Hungarian sabre team at the 1956 Melbourne games. Along with many other Hungarian athletes who wished to escape re-occupation of Hungary by the Soviet Union, which happened while the Olympics were underway, he chose to come to the United States on a plane chartered by Sports Illustrated magazine.
The Fairmont Exhibition, 1958
The Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco is perched at the top of swanky Nob Hill. One of the premiere hotels in the city, it opened in 1907 after an extensive refurbishing of the damage done by the 1906 earthquake to the about-to-open Beaux-Arts building. Famed...
Tomas Orley
Tomas Orley was one of the leaders of the student protests that sparked the Hungarian revolution of 1956 that eventually saw Soviet tanks storm into the country and forcibly return the control of the country to communist hands.
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