Viktor Barna

Viktor Győző Barna, born Győző Braun on 24 August 1911 and died on 27 February 1972, was a Hungarian and British table tennis champion and a record five-time singles World Champion. He won 41 World Championship medals, 22 of them gold, and 20 English Open titles. Because of anti-Semitism in Hungary he changed his birth name to a Hungarian-sounding one. When the Second World War began he returned from America to Europe, served in the British Army as a parachutist and fought in Yugoslavia, then settled in London and became a British national in 1952. He wrote three books on the game and died of a heart attack in Lima, Peru. He entered the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 1981 and the ITTF Hall of Fame in 1993.