On the fields of World War II – Sport – Kommersant

80 years ago, in August 1942, a series of football matches between the German military and the players of the local Dynamo took place in Kyiv. One of the meetings went down in history as the “death match”. How and why they played football in besieged Leningrad, Kyiv, Mariupol and Stalingrad – in the material “Kommersant”.

“Match of Life” in Leningrad

The date: May 31, 1942

Place: besieged Leningrad

Teams: “Dynamo” and the team of the N-factory

In April 1942, the Germans began to scatter leaflets over Leningrad and its suburbs: “Leningrad is the city of the dead. We wiped this city off the face of the earth.” To support the city and its defenders, the authorities organized several football matches under the slogan “The dead don’t play football.”

On May 31, 1942, the most famous match between the teams of Dynamo and the N-factory took place at the Dynamo stadium. For the latter, in particular, five Zenit players, two Spartak, one Dynamo and one hockey player played. The exhausted players spent two short halves of 30 minutes on the field. Dynamo won 6:0.

According to some reports, the match was commented on in Russian and German, and the positions of its defenders and the Nazis were broadcast to the city through loudspeakers. But the workers of the Leningrad radio called it unlikely – many of them read about the match only in the newspapers.

Football historian Alexei Dunayevsky:

“Women exhausted from hunger, housewives, laborers of the Dynamo stadium, staggering from fatigue and hunger, put the whole territory in order … Many football players returned from the front with contusions and injuries. N-factory team player Alexander Fisenko lost his speech, and Boris Oreshkin was seriously wounded in the leg in February. And with such an injury it was necessary to play, and not to know about it.

Matches in concentration camps

Dates: 1940–1945

Locations: Gross-Rosen, Stalag XXID and Auschwitz (Poland), Theresienstadt (Czech Republic), Nuremberg-Langwasser (Germany) and others

Teams: prisoners and guards

Often football was played in labor and concentration camps. Some of the prisoners did it voluntarily, and some under duress. Balls were supplied to the camps through the Red Cross and YMCA Christian associations. In Poznań, prisoners from Stalag XXID named their club Aston Villa.

In the spring of 1943, the head of Gross-Rosen, Walter Ernstberger, introduced regular football games to the concentration camp to entertain the guards and SS officers. Teams were formed on a national basis. Players from the Soviet Union and Poland often played together. In one of the matches, the “Russian Zhorka” stood at the gate. According to the recollections of the prisoners, goals and passes in Gross-Rosen were reacted as loudly as at the Cracovia and Wisla stadiums. If the SS liked the match, they threw cigarettes on the field. But a goal against them could end in beatings or death.

Games between the guards of Auschwitz and neighboring camps and Wehrmacht soldiers were judged by the Polish Jew Leo Goldstein. After his release, he continued to serve matches, entered the FIFA referee list and assisted referees at the 1962 World Cup in Chile.

Memoirs of prisoners of war in the presentation of the publication “Sport-Express”:

“On the one hand, eleven well-fed, leather-booted, immoral bandits; and on the other, eleven thin Hungarians in shoes with wooden soles… The Hungarians bravely resisted them. They were kicked, thrown to the ground, but they got up, responding to rudeness and rudeness with their football skills … after the end of a lost match, beaten and bruised, they left the playing field.

“In that match, where we played like for the last time in our lives, Poland won – 1:0. And the only goal was scored by Lewandowski. Not Robert – Zdzhislav. “Ten” on the field, number 23452 in the camp … “

“After the match ended, we went to the bathhouse together with the German team. Then they returned to the barracks. Evening rest was severely disrupted by an organized attack by a group of SS campers. They began to violently beat with sticks all the prisoners there, beating those who were taken by surprise and unable to escape. This was the answer for the match won by Poland. Our tormentors didn’t even hide it.”

Match of metallurgists in Mariupol

The date: October 31, 1941

Place: Mariupol

Teams: “Ilyichevets” and a team of German tank troops

On October 8, 1941, soldiers of the tank units of the Wehrmacht entered Mariupol. Soon the Germans resumed steel production in the occupied city. In order to attract local skilled workers, the occupiers established ties with the townspeople. On October 31, they organized a football match of tank troops against the team of the Ilyich Iron and Steel Works.

Professional football players from the Ilyichevets club played for the townspeople. Many did not go to the front because of the armor, but they hesitated and could not be evacuated from Mariupol along with the metallurgical plants. Ilyichevtsy played with eight men, but still won by a margin of two goals. The Germans did not play more matches.

Football historians Sergey Katrich and Alexander Boyarenko:

“The extremely weakened squad did not give the fascist invaders a reason to rejoice and won the match 3:1, despite the fact that the Germans played rough, sometimes even cruelly … on the football field, which for a while became the field of a real ideological battle.”

“Death Match” in Kyiv

Dates: August 6 and 9, 1942

Place: Kyiv

Teams: “Start” and “Flakelf”

After the occupation of Kyiv, the Germans began to settle in the city. By the spring of 1942, they had opened cinemas, an opera house, and allowed football teams. Many players of Dynamo Kyiv and Lokomotiv Kyiv served in the fighter battalion and defended Kyiv. During the retreat of the Red Army, they were surrounded near Boryspil, were taken prisoner and taken to the occupied city. In Kyiv, they worked as loaders at bakery No. 1 and became the basis of the Start factory team.

On the field, professionals from Start competed with amateurs: soldiers, mechanics and officers from Hungary and Germany. In total, they played nine matches and almost every time they won with a crushing score. The history includes the last two meetings.

August 6, 1942 Soviet football players went against the team of anti-aircraft gunners “Flakelf” and won the match with a score of 5:1. Encouraged fans at the stadium shouted anti-fascist slogans. Three days later, the Germans held a rematch – and lost it with a score of 3:5. After that, the Stadtcommissar of Kyiv, Friedrich Rogausz, forbade the starters to play with the Germans.

On August 18, several Start players were arrested and sent to the Gestapo. The reason was the glass that the Germans found in the products of the bakery No. 1 for a military hospital. But the rumor linked the arrests with the victory of Dynamo. During interrogations, striker Nikolai Korotkikh died of a heart attack. Eight more players were sent to the Syrets concentration camp (Babi Yar). In the winter of 1943, one of the best Soviet goalkeepers Nikolai Trusevich, midfielder Ivan Kuzmenko and defender Alexei Klimenko were shot by order of the camp commandant.

From an interview with the son of the death match player Vladlen Putistin:

“What training?! There was work, exhausting, daily …. The Germans introduced cards for women and children, gave 200 grams of bread a week, and as for the male population, a special order was issued that everyone should work. Those who did not obey were doomed not even to starvation, but to be shot… Even decades later, at the anniversaries of Dynamo, the generals asked the surviving football players: “Why were four shot and you remained alive?”

Match on the ruins of Stalingrad

The date: May 2, 1943

Place: Stalingrad

Teams: Dynamo (Stalingrad) and Spartak (Moscow)

On February 2, 1943, the Wehrmacht capitulated in the Battle of Stalingrad. The city authorities celebrated the return to peaceful life with a football match. Of the sports facilities, the stadium of the Azot plant suffered the least damage. The military demined it and moved anti-aircraft guns, Komsomol members filled up the craters, prepared the lawn and erected temporary stands for several thousand people.

Before the war, Traktor was the strongest team in the city. But his players were drafted into the army or evacuated to Chelyabinsk along with production. The players of the local Dynamo were the most lucky. They were able to keep the squad. As a result, Stalingrad brought together players from Dynamo and Traktor in one team. Spartak was called as a rival from Moscow. Because of the German shelling, the plane with the capital’s football players was accompanied by fighter jets to Stalingrad.

According to the observations of sports journalist Yevgeny Zyriankin, the fans came to the match as if it were a holiday, they brought seeds and gramophones to the stadium. Spartak rarely attacked the gate – and Stalingraders won 1:0.

Team Captain Konstantin Belikov:

“We were put on enhanced nutrition: millet porridge, herring. We trained every day. It was hard, of course, to get into shape. But when you hear the ball ringing, your heart jumps. Football is…”

“For example, my boots burned down along with the house. These boots were! I took care of them as well as the glorious sat on the leg.

British sports correspondent Bruce Harris: “Would it be possible to think that Stalingrad, after such experiences that no other city had experienced, was able to put a team on the football field? Isn’t this one of the manifestations of the Stalingrad spirit?..”

Ignat Vorontsov