Nikolaus Hirschl

Nikolaus “Micki” Hirschl’s parents owned a kosher butcher shop. He started as a track & field athlete and later joined the wrestling team of the Zionistic Hakoah sports club in Wien (Vienna). Starting in 1924 he won the national wrestling title in his class for 10 consecutive years.

In Los Angeles in 1932, he won bronze medals as a heavyweight in both Greco-Roman and freestyle. He also excelled as an active shot putter, discus thrower and weightlifter, winning Austrian junior championships in all three disciplines, as well as a pentathlete, winning the Austrian title for seven successive years. As a Jew Hirschl boycotted the 1936 Olympics.

He was also politically engaged in the Social Democrats Party and the Republican Protection League. Most of his family was killed in the Holocaust during World War II, and Hirschl had to flee to Palestine in 1934 because he shot down a Nazi who had attacked him in a park. During World War II he joined the British forces in North Africa fighting against the Germans. In 1947 he immigrated to Australia and ran a meat business.