ITTF 1926-2001 Table Tennis Legends

“I coached the Egyptians in Alexandria and started from best European players of the time. On top of all that, 44-year- scratch. I went to various universities and picked some boys, old Alojsz made it among the eight best players at the 1957 coached them round the clock and after two months somehow Stockholm championships. A truly praiseworthy achievement managed to get together a team of sorts. Unfortunately, the - almost matching his three final matches for the world title in absence of the Hungarians and the Americans was felt at the his youth. Alex won over the well-known Czechoslovak championships; the Poles did not show up either, so I Frantisek Tokar, Holusek of West Germany, Kennedy of appeared as an Egyptian. I beat Hexner and Bama, the still England... and then had to bow down to the much younger unknown Zarko Dolinar in the semi-finals, and again faced and faster Japanese Ogimura. Everybody believed that Richard Bergmann in the final. This time my chances were Ehrlich would finally say goodbye to active playing after this really remote because I was totally exhausted by the end of the achievement. No way! The Polish Frenchman Alojsz Alex championships.” Ehrlich - owner of six world championship medals (-, 3, 3) - appeared again at the first European championships held in Along with his excellent score at several world championships, Budapest in 1958, as well as at the Ljubljana World Alojsz Ehrlich also won (before World War II) the Polish Championships, where he lost, after an even match, to the far Open in 1934 and 1935, the English Open in 1936, and the younger Englishman Chester Barnes. The 1967 French Open French Open in 1937 and 1938. nevertheless marked his farewell. He was fifty-four at the time, and after that he focused on coaching. Tlie list of the “Actually, the nicest part of my sports career came to an end countries in which he coached is truly impressive: France, in Cairo... I had a very hard time during the war. I was a Polish England, Ireland, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden (Alser owes army soldier in France, escaped from Paris when the Germans much of his stardom to Ehrlich), Portugal, Greece, Poland, occupied it, and then joined the Resistance. The Nazis caught Egypt, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Italy, Spain, me and put me in a concentration camp (Auschwitz, Dachau). Norway and India. Over a number of years Ehrlich held a Without my strong constitution and intensive sports activity in summer seminar for coaches at his tourist&sports camp Golfe my youth (football, field-and-track, handball, tennis and Bleu in St. Tropez, but he also ran a camp for all players, hockey) I would not have survived.” young and old ones alike, wishing to improve their table tennis... “When was I the happiest? Not at competitions, in spite of my fair share of success. I was the happiest ever when I saw an "My profession? It was always linked with table tennis. I was American soldier in May 1945. I was desperate, at the end of always alone, that's the problem that has been following me all my tether, I had not eaten or drunk anything for eight days, my life," used to say this citizen of the world and old table and just lay in a rail car somewhere between Austria and tennis wolf. Germany. I was all skin and bones, weighing less than eighty pounds. Any day after that martyrdom was a happy day. After Alex died at the Saint Denis Hospital on 7 December 1992, at recovering several months in a hospital I simply ached for a the age of seventy-eight. table tennis game. It attracted me irresistibly although I had the impression that I was playing like a real beginner.” At the time Alex was thirty-one, and he continued to play and compete. The past had left its mark, and he was not the Alojsz Ehrlich of the prewar years. Nevertheless, thanks to his fight ing spirit the 'old' Pole again beat some leading international players and even won international tournaments... * * * Ehrlich certainly did not want to miss the first postwar world championships in 'his' Paris in 1947. To everybody's surprise "My father was a Jew, so I was also a Jew for the Germans - he accounted for Ivan Andreadis, the excellent new Czech but not for Israel because my mother was Catholic. Actually, I star, 3-0, and placed among the top sixteen. The following year don't know what I am: when I was bom I was an Austrian the reached the final of the French Open. At the English Open because the place where I was bom in early 1914 belonged to he beat the new world champion, Johnny Leach, and then Austria. Five years later I became a Pole without anyone took the Irish Open. In 1950 he won the Dutch and (again) the asking me about it; in 1940 I became a Soviet citizen because Irish Open. In London he defeated Rene Roothooft of France the USSR took over Lvov. During the occupation, in 1941, (14-21, 18-17, 8-7, 10-5), then Kennedy and, after fifteen years, Lvov was occupied by the Germans, so I became German won the prestigious English Open! He also played very well at overnight... and so on and so forth... the Dutch Open in 1953, where he beat Bergmann and Dolinar, enough for runner-up. In the final of the 1955 At competitions in France I was a Frenchman for the press German Open in Kiel he defeated young Freuendorfer (in when I won; but when I lost I was a Pole, of course. People terms of age the latter could have been his son), and in 1956 often asked me what I actually was. I always told them - a he won the tournaments in Utrecht and Borkum ahead of the citizen of the world!" 62.

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