by Jacov Sobovitz

Born in Hungary in 1908, Anna Sipos is remembered for her accomplishments as an outstanding table tennis player, ranked the second best women’s player of her time. Altogether, Sipos won twenty-one medals—eleven gold, six silver and four bronze—in World Championship table tennis competition.

Anna Sipos won national singles titles in 1926, 1927, 1931, 1935 and 1939. She was also an outstanding doubles player and won the national title every year from 1929 to 1933, in 1935 and 1939–1940. While Sipos was the first female player to use the penholder grip, she changed to the shakehand grip in 1932 and thereupon succeeded in defeating her former doubles partner Maria Mednyanszky.

In 1942, when table tennis, like all other sports in Hungary, became Judenfrei (cleansed of Jews), Sipos’s career came to an end.

Anna Sipos died in 1972 and in 1996 was inducted into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.