Gertrude "Traute or Trude" Kleinová (born in

Brno Brno ( , ; ) is a Statutory city (Czech Republic), city in the South Moravian Region of the Czech Republic. Located at the confluence of the Svitava (river), Svitava and Svratka (river), Svratka rivers, Brno has about 403,000 inhabitants, making ...

Czechoslovakia Czechoslovakia ( ; Czech language, Czech and , ''Česko-Slovensko'') was a landlocked country in Central Europe, created in 1918, when it declared its independence from Austria-Hungary. In 1938, after the Munich Agreement, the Sudetenland beca ...

; August 13, 1918 – April 9, 1976) was a three-time world champion

table tennis Table tennis (also known as ping-pong) is a racket sport derived from tennis but distinguished by its playing surface being atop a stationary table, rather than the Tennis court, court on which players stand. Either individually or in teams of ...

player, winning the women's team world championship twice, and the world mixed doubles once. She and her first husband were deported by the Nazis to the

Theresienstadt concentration camp Theresienstadt Ghetto was established by the SS during World War II in the fortress town of Terezín, in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia ( German-occupied Czechoslovakia). Theresienstadt served as a waystation to the extermination c ...

and eventually sent to the

Auschwitz concentration camp Auschwitz, or Oświęcim, was a complex of over 40 Nazi concentration camps, concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany, occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) d ...

, where her husband was killed. She was posthumously inducted into the

International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame The International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame (IJSHOF) () is the international hall of fame for Jewish athletes and special contributors to the world of sport. The purpose of the IJSHOF is to honor Jewish individuals, worldwide, who have accompli ...

Early life

Kleinová was Jewish, and was a member of the Maccabi Club of Brno.

Table tennis career

Kleinová was a member of the Czech national table tennis team that won the 1935 and 1936 Women's World Table Tennis Championships (the Corbillon Cup). At the 1935 championships in

Wembley Wembley () is a large suburbIn British English, "suburb" often refers to the secondary urban centres of a city. Wembley is not a suburb in the American sense, i.e. a single-family residential area outside of the city itself. in the London Borou ...

, England, she advanced to the quarterfinals in singles, doubles, and mixed doubles. Kleinova Gertrude, Retrieved July 19, 2011 In March 1936, she also teamed with Miloslav Hamr to win the

gold medal A gold medal is a medal awarded for highest achievement in a non-military field. Its name derives from the use of at least a fraction of gold in form of plating or alloying in its manufacture. Since the eighteenth century, gold medals have b ...

in the Mixed Doubles 10th

World Table Tennis Championships The World Table Tennis Championships are table tennis competitions sanctioned by the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF). The World Championships have been held since 1926, biennially since 1957. Five individual events, which include men ...

in Prague. In the competition they defeated Americans

Buddy Blattner Robert Garnett "Buddy" Blattner (February 8, 1920 – September 4, 2009) was an American table tennis and professional baseball player. He played five seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB), primarily for the New York Giants. After his reti ...

and Jay Purves in the preliminaries, as they won 21–19 in the fifth game. In the Women's Doubles in 1936, Kleinová and Jindra Holoubkova-Juarez lost to Americans World Champion

Ruth Aarons Ruth Hughes Aarons (June 11, 1918 – June 6, 1980) was a US table tennis player, vaudeville entertainer, and talent manager. Early life Ruth Aarons was born in Stamford, Connecticut, to Leila (née Hughes), an opera singer, and Alfred E. Aa ...

and Jay Purves in the quarter-finals, losing 21–19 in the fourth game. In singles, she advanced as far as the round of 32. In 1937, in the Mixed Doubles at the World Table Tennis Championships in

Baden Baden (; ) is a historical territory in southern Germany. In earlier times it was considered to be on both sides of the Upper Rhine, but since the Napoleonic Wars, it has been considered only East of the Rhine. History The margraves of Ba ...

, Austria, Americans Abe Berenbaum and Emily Fuller upset the defending champions Kleinová and Hamr in the round of 32, by a score of −11, −15, 5, 19, 15. She also lost in the round of 16 in both singles and Women's Doubles. Kleinová married Jacob Schalinger, the Chairman of her table tennis division, in 1939.

Concentration camps, and later life

Kleinová and her husband, as well as her coach Eric Vogel, were deported by the

Nazi Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During H ...

s to the

in December 1941. Each was eventually sent to the

. She and Vogel survived, but her husband was killed. She later married Vogel. After World War II concluded, in 1948 Kleinová and Vogel emigrated to the United States. She died of cancer in 1976.

Hall of Fame

In 1994, Kleinová was inducted into the

References

External links