Yakiv Punkin
Olympic wrestler (1921–1994)
Yakov Grigorievich Punkin (Russian: Яков Григорьевич Пункин; 8 December 1921 – 12 October 1994) was a featherweight Greco-Roman wrestler from Ukraine. Competing for the Soviet Union he won a gold medal at the 1952 Olympics. He placed fifth at the 1953 World Championships. He became the first Olympic gold champion born on the territory of the modern Ukraine.
Biography
Punkin was Jewish. He took up wrestling in 1938, while working at a factory as a turner. At the onset of World War II in 1941 he joined the Soviet Army, but was soon captured by the Germans and spent the rest of the war in German prisoner-of-war camps: until summer 1942 in Emsland, in 1942–1945 in Osnabrück, and later in 1945 near Magdeburg. Throughout those year Punkin posed as a Muslim Ossetian man, hiding his Jewish origin, else he would be shot much earlier than many of his cellmates. When he was liberated by Soviet troops in 1945 he weighed only 36 kg.
Between 1945 and 1948 Punkin served with the Soviet Army, where he continued wrestling and won the 1947 Army championships.
The public source identifies “Yakiv Punkin” as olympic wrestler (1921–1994). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Yakiv, Punkin and Olympic.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q721954. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1921, 1994, 1952 and 1953.
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This entry incorporates text from “Yakiv Punkin” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.