The Death Match

For other uses, see Deathmatch (disambiguation).
The Death Match

The official poster about the match printed by the German administration
Start Flakelf
5 3
Date 9 August 1942
Venue Zenit stadium[lower-alpha 1], Kiev, Reichskommissariat Ukraine

The Death Match (Russian: Матч смерти) is a name given in postwar historiography to the football match played in Kiev in Reichskommissariat Ukraine (abbreviated RKU) under occupation by Nazi Germany. The Kiev city team Start (Cyrillic: Старт) which represented the city Bread Factory No.1 played several football games in World War II. The team was composed mostly of former professional footballers of Dynamo Kyiv and Lokomotyv Kyiv who worked at the factory under the occupation authority.

On August 6, 1942, FC Start played the German team Flakelf. There was an estimated 2,000 spectators in attendance, with each spectator paying a total of five rubles to attend.[lower-alpha 2]

Background

Kyiv after bombings (World War II)

A Kiev native Georgiy Kuzmin points out in his book Facts and fiction of our football (Были и небыли нашего футбола) that the first squads of Dynamo Kyiv included a number of regular Cheka members among whom was Konstantin Fomin. Konstantin Fomin is known to have participated in repressions against Kharkiv sportsmen of Polish descent during 1935–1936.[1] Right before World War II, Fomin also played in Lokomotyv.

Because players were not getting paid regularly, the football team of Dynamo for some time had a shortage (only eight players).[1] The team's captain Konstantin Shchegotsky even tried to escape to Dnipropetrovsk, where he played for FC Dynamo Dnipropetrovsk, but was forced to come back.[1] During the Holodomor in 1932–33, half of the team escaped to Ivanovo near Moscow.[1] Two of Dynamo's players, Pionkovsky and Sviridovsky, were arrested by the NKVD agents during an attempt to exchange several cuts of cloth for products and therefore had to work "for the good of the country" for two years in a penal colony. During the Great Purge in 1938, Piontkovsky, and one of the Dynamo's team creators, Barminsky were targeted, and eventually shot in 1941. The season was never completed, as Germany invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941. Several Dynamo Kyiv players joined the military and went off to fight. The initial success of the Wehrmacht allowed it to capture the city from the Red Army. Several of the Dynamo Kyiv players who had survived the onslaught found themselves in prisoner-of-war camps.

In taking Kiev, the Germans captured over 600,000 Soviet soldiers. The city was under a strict occupation regime. Universities and schools were shut down; only in 1942 a four-year school for the Ukrainian population was introduced. Youth over 15 years and adults under 60 years old were submitted to labour obligations.[2] Thousands of inhabitants were deported to Germany for forced labour. The Germans controlled the Ukrainian police, who took part in the hunt for Bolsheviks and Jews.

Myth

Creation

In autumn of 1943 after the withdrawal of the German troops from Kiev and the reestablishment of Soviet administration, writer Lev Kassil was the first to report about the death of Dynamo players murdered by the Germans. But his report in the newspaper Izvestiya did not mention the football match.[3][4] The expression "Death Match" appeared in the newspaper Stalinskoye plemya ("Stalin's tribe") on August 24, 1946 (#164, page 3) where a film script of Aleksandr Borshchagovsky was published. In 1958, he published his novel Alerting Clouds (Trevozhnye oblaka) about the match. Also in 1958, Piotr Severov and Naum Khalemsky published their novel The Last Duel (Posledni poyedinok).[5]

These two novels gave inspiration to Yevgeni Karelov's black and white film Third Time (Тreti time).[6] According to the Great Soviet Encyclopedia about 32 million spectators saw it in the Soviet cinemas.[7] The "Death Match" was also a very popular subject of the Soviet press. None of these publications mentioned survivors of the match.

The Start players surviving the German occupation did not show up in public. In the first years after World War II, they were suspected as having collaborated with the Germans. They were controlled and interrogated by the secret police (NKVD).[8][9]

In the Brezhnev era

The reports about the "Death Match" changed in the mid-sixties. Under the rule of Leonid Brezhnev the propaganda of the Communist Party had to expose the heroism of the Soviet population during World War II. The "Death Match" became part of Kiev's war history. The exact number of victims was given: four Dynamo players were murdered by the Germans – the goalkeeper Nikolai Trusevich, an ethnic Russian, defender Olexi Klimenko and goalgetter Ivan Kuzmenko who together had played on the vice champion team of 1936 [10] as well as midfielder Mikola Korotkykh, having left Dynamo in 1939.[11]

In 1965, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR awarded posthumously four Dynamo players killed by the Germans the Medal "For Courage". Five surviving players got the Medal for Battle Merit: Volodymyr Balakin, Makar Honcharenko, Mikhailo Melnik, Vassyl Sukharev, Mikhailo Sviridovsky.[12]

Despite a KGB dossier warning about the "glorification" of the players with known collaborators amongst them,[13] two monuments were erected in Kiev in 1971. The former Zenit Stadium where the match had taken place in 1942 was renamed to FC Start Stadium.[14]

Historical accounts and analysis after the dissolution of the USSR

After the decline of the Soviet Union, journalists and historians in the new state of Ukraine were able to make historical research without being controlled by Glavlit, the Soviet censorship agency.

Eyewitness

The 50th anniversary of the "Death Match" in 1992 marked the beginning of eyewitness reports in Ukrainian mass media:

All these reports denied the Soviet version: There were no SS officers being referees or threatening the Start team.[19] The Germans played fair, the referee did not manipulate. There were no heavy armed soldiers with dogs in the stadium. The red jerseys were not a symbol for communist spirit; instead, the players got them from the Germans.[20] Indeed, the Germans arrested nine of the Start players, but the first among them was nine days after the match. Five, not four, players were murdered by the SS, three among them half a year after the match. All the eyewitnesses denied the version that the Dynamo players were murdered as revenge for the German defeat.[21]

Historical research

The first genuine historical studies of the "Death Match" confirmed the reports of the eyewitnesses. Former Generallieutenant of Justice Volodymyr Pristaiko, having been vice chief of the Ukrainian Security Service SBU, summoned his analysis of the papers documenting the arrest and death of the Dynamo players: "There was definitively no context to the match."[22] In his book (2006), he published NKVD papers concerning FC Start from 1944 to 1948 as well as KGB documents from the Breshnew era.[23]

Historian Volodymyr Hynda showed that defeats of German teams against local clubs happened regularly. The Ukrainian press, controlled by the Germans, published many reports about these matches. Hynda found informations about 150 matches and documented the results of 111 among them: the Ukrainians won 60 matches and lost 36 matches, 15 were draws.[24]

History of FC Start

Articles published in the daily Nove ukrainske Slovo (New Ukrainian Word), controlled by the Germans, the reports of the witnesses and the NKVD documentation allow a reconstruction of FC Start's history.

Organisation of the bakery team

Under German occupation, all Soviet organisations and clubs were dissolved. By the end of 1941, German administration allowed newly formed Ukrainian sport clubs.[25] In January 1942, football trainer and sport reporter Georgi Dmitrievich Shvetsov founded the club Rukh (Movement). He tried to engage the best players in Kiev.[26]

But most of the former Dynamo players, among them the very popular goalkeeper Trusevich, did not want to play in Rukh, probably because they took Shvetsov for a collaborateur. Trusevich found a job in the Bakery No. 1 which guaranteed their workers and their families normal supplies of food.[8][27] More former Dynamo players found jobs in the bakery. The German director Joseph Kordik, an engineer from Moravia, encouraged them to form a football team: FC Start. After World War II Kordik declared to the NKVD that in reality he was Czech, not German.[12][26][28]

Three players of the former club Lokomotiv Kiev were incorporated into the new team.[29] Four former players who were directly submitted to the German administration also played for Start: three Ukrainian policemen [30][31] and one engine driver of the German railways Reichsbahn in Kiev.[12] None amongst the Start players had played for the Dynamo team in the years just before the war. Some of them had left the club a couple of years before.[10]

Matches in June and July 1942

Seven Start matches are documented for June and July 1942: against the Ukrainian teams Rukh and Sport, three Hungarian military teams, a team of the German artillery and the German railway team RSG. FC Start won all the matches, scoring 37 and conceding only 8 goals.[32]

Match against Flakelf on 6 August 1942

On 6 August 1942, FC Start beat Flakelf scoring 5–1. The names of the German players are given in cyrillic letters on the poster: Harer, Danz, Schneider, Biskur, Scharf, Kaplan, Breuer, Arnold, Jannasch, Wunderlich, Hofmann.[33]

Revenge match against Flakelf on 9 August 1942

With spectators of 2000,[17] the teams met again three days later, in the later so-called "Death Match". The poster informed that Flakelf had a "strengthened" team but did not reveal any names. But it named 14 Start players, amongst them Lev Gundarev, Georgi Timofeyev and Olexander Tkachenko, Ukrainian policemen under German command.[30]

The score was 5–3 in favour of Start. Only the first half of the match is documented: The Germans opened the score, then Ivan Kuzmenko and Makar Honcharenko two times marked the 3–1 score for half time.[11] After the match a German took a photograph of both teams showing a relaxed atmosphere. Some days later he offered a copy to former Lokomotiv player Volodymyr Balakin.[12][34] This photograph was never published in Soviet times.[35]

Afterwards the winners drank a glass of self-made vodka and met at a party in the evening.[36]

Arrest of the players

On 16 August 1942, FC Start beat Rukh scoring 8–0. Two days later, on 18 August, the Gestapo arrested six of the Start players in the bakery and two days later two others were arrested.[37]

The destinies of the Kiev players

In contradiction to the Soviet version not all of the Start players were prosecuted by the Gestapo. After the war Soviet authorities punished some of them for collaboration with the Germans.

In Gestapo jail

According to the archives, some of the Start players said during the NKVD interrogation that they were convinced having been denounced to the Gestapo by Rukh trainer Georgi Shvetsov.[38][39] According to them, he had been very angry after Rukh's 8–0 defeat. Therefore, he informed the Gestapo that the former Dynamo players had been officially members of the NKVD.[11] The Gestapo arrested them as potential NKVD agents who could organise sabotage acts in Kiev.[12]

Ukrainian historians are convinced that this version was the real reason for the arrest; also because of the fact that the three former Lokomotive players in FC Start were not prosecuted by the Gestapo.[40] The Gestapo did not arrest neither Georgi Timofeyev for having played in the "Death match" nor Lev Gundarev who was named on the poster but did not take part in the match. Both served in the Ukrainian police.[30] Their names were never mentioned in Soviet publications.

The first two deaths

The Kiev archives document the cases of Olexander Tkachenko and Mikola Korotkykh as both not having played on Dynamo's first team before the war. Both cases do not show any context of the "Death Match":

Forced labour in the concentration camp Syrets

After three weeks in the Gestapo prison, eight of the former Dynamo players were deported to the Syrets concentration camp next to the valley of Babi Yar in the outskirts of Kiev. Nikolai Trusevich, Olexi Klimenko and Ivan Kuzmenko had to work in a group of street builders.[44] Pavlo Komarov, Mikhail Putistin and Fedor Tyutchev worked as electricians outside the camp. Makar Honcharenko and Mikhailo Sviridovsky had to repair shoes for the Wehrmacht. The prisoners working outside the camp were not guarded by the SS, but rather by Ukrainian policemen who allowed their families to bring them food. They spent only nights in the camps; Komorav was chosen by the SS as a Kapo.[12]

Execution of three players in the concentration camp

About half a year after their arrest, Trusevich, Klimenko and Kuzmenko were executed amongst a group of prisoners on 24 February 1943 in the camp. Survivors reported that the bodies were thrown into the mass graves of Babi Yar.[22][45] None of the surviving players described the execution as consequence of the match on 9 August 1942. On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the match, Honcharenko said on Kiev radio: "They died like many other Soviet people because the two totalitarian systems were fighting each other and they were destined to become victims of that grand scale massacre."[11][46]

The reports give several reasons for the execution:

After World War II

After receiving the information about the execution in the camp, Honcharenko and Sviridovsky left the shoe repairing facility and hid in the apartment of friends in Kiev.[8] By the end of the sixties, Honcharenko became a media figure and often told the official version of the Death Match, but after the end of the Soviet regime he denied this version.[12][50]

Putistin and Tyutchev fled from the camp in September 1943 when the Germans left Kiev.[51] Tyutchev died in 1959, before the surviving Dynamo players became stars of Soviet propaganda. Putistin was not awarded any honour in 1966. According to his son, he did not want to repeat the propaganda version.[12]

Komarov, before World War II Dynamo's penalty specialist, left Kiev with the Germans. It is not known whether he was forced to come with them as a forced labour slave or was a collaborator. In 1945, he found himself in occupied Western Germany and soon he emigrated to Canada.[51][52] His name was never mentioned in any Soviet publications.

Former Ukrainian policeman Timofeyev was sentenced to five years in the Gulag for collaborating with the Germans. Gundarev, according to NKVD documents a "German agent", was condemned to death, but later his punishment was changed to ten years in the Gulag. He was not allowed to return to Kiev; he had to stay in the Asian part of the Soviet Union. He became the director of the stadium in Karaganda in the Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan.[53][54] Both cases were never mentioned in Soviet publications.

Investigation in Germany

After the publication of a report in a German newspaper repeating the Soviet version,[55] a case about the "Death Match" was opened by the prosecution office of Hamburg in July 1974.[56] As Soviet authorities did not collaborate on the case, it was closed in March 1976. In 2002, the Ukrainian authorities informed Hamburg about their new investigation,[57] so the case was reopened, but finally closed by the investigation commission in February 2005. The commission was not able to find any connections between the game and the execution of people who participated in it, nor any person responsible for the executions being still alive.[58] Radomski had been killed on 14 March 1945.[59]

Inspiration for heroic stories

The publications in the Kiev press found a strong echo in Ukraine, but they were ignored by most authors in other countries.

John Huston's film (1981)

In 1981, Michael Caine and Sylvester Stallone starred in the film Escape to Victory, directed by John Huston, which told the story of a group of Allied POWs who are challenged to a match against the prison's guards. While the film's POWs are not Ukrainian but rather predominately Westerners, the story parallels are clear: they are threatened with death if they win, the playing ground is surrounded with Nazi guards and attack dogs, the referee ignores vicious and brutal fouls committed by the German team, yet the Allied prisoner team ignore the threat and draw the match, thus risking forfeiting their lives. (Huston's film has a deus ex machina ending which conflicts with the original Soviet story when the spectators storm the field at the match's end and the POWs escape in the resultant confusion, but as no event similar to this actually occurred in the West during World War II, it is generally assumed that this film was inspired by the legendary/propaganda version of the Death Match.)

Andy Dougan's book (2001)

In the Anglo-American media, the publication of a book by the Scottish journalist Andy Dougan [60] inspired many articles.[61] Dougan specialises in publications about Hollywood and has written books about George Clooney, Robert De Niro and Robin Williams. On the front page of his Dynamo book, he exposes his thesis: "If ever soccer was a matter of life and death, then it was here."

2008 Bleacher report article

In 2008 someone by the name of Willie Gannon as a senior writer wrote an article about the Dynamo's "Death Match" that starts with the following "This is a true story that I was told by my father..."[62] In the article Mr.Gannon claims that Hitler in order to prove that he is the greatest military general of all time invaded Russia.[62] Mr.Gannon also claims that Germans entered Kiev "with little or no resistance" and Major General Ebenhardt was rushing to stage a game between a German team and no other else but Dynamo Kyiv.[62] In the article the writer also describes that the Kiev team was always threatened with execution, but played and won every single game including the game against "German" team Rukh.[62] After beating Rukh 8 to 0, all players were either executed or sent to concentration camp, so no one survived.[62]

Andrey Malyukov's film (2012)

The film Match (2012) by the Russian director Andrey Malyukov, also ignores the reports of Ukrainian witnesses and scholars and repeats the Soviet propaganda version. In the film, Russian communists are fighting against the German occupiers. All the collaborateurs speak Ukrainian. Malyukov became popular as a director of a nationalistic–patriotic TV series about Russian troops in the Caucasus and in Afghanistan.[63] Ukrainian authorities blocked the release of the film for several months because according to them, the film gives a wrong picture of history.[64]

Further reading

Notes

  1. ↑ Today it is known as Start Stadium located in the Shevchenko Raion, Kiev.
  2. ↑ Note that "Flakelf" is an abbreviated combination of the German words Flak (Fliegerabwehrkanone – air defense artillery) and elf – "eleven" which was used to denote an association football team.

Citations

  1. 1 2 3 4 Kipiani, V. "Byli i niebyli nasheva futbola". From the Polytechnic to the Death match. Ukrayinska Pravda. May 5, 2012.
  2. ↑ Hynda (2012), p. 321
  3. ↑ Izvestiya, 16 November 1943, p.4.
  4. ↑ see: Hynda (2012), pp. 246–247
  5. ↑ http://www.e-reading-lib.com/book.php?book=1013262
  6. ↑ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056615/
  7. ↑ http://www.enci.ru/ Третий_тайм_(фильм)
  8. 1 2 3 4 Georgi Kuzmin, Goryacheye leto sorok vtorogo, in: Futbol 13/1995 chapter: Футбол, хлеб насущный.
  9. ↑ Pristaiko (2006), pp. 43–87
  10. 1 2 Pristaiko (2006), p. 15
  11. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Kuzmin (1995), Момент истины
  12. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Wladlen Putistin, in: Bulvar, 7 August 2002, p. 5. ФУТБОЛ В ГОДЫ ВОЙНЫ. Часть пятая: МИФ О "МАТЧЕ СМЕРТИ" Sport-express.ru
  13. ↑ Pristaiko (2006), pp. 48–50
  14. ↑ Vecherni Kyiv, 21 June 1971, p. 1.
  15. ↑ Partially cited in Dougan (2001), pp. 229–233
  16. ↑ "Pravda o ‚Matche smerti'", in: Kievskie Novosti, 22 October 1992, p. 8.
  17. 1 2 O. Yasinsky, A byl li "Match smerti"?, in: Vseukrainskiye Vedomosti, 12 November 1994, p. 8.
  18. ↑ see also http://2000.net.ua/2000/sport-revju/igra/33047
  19. ↑ Hynda (2012), p. 274
  20. ↑ Hynda (2012), pp. 268–270
  21. ↑ Russian articles confronting elements of the Soviet version to the eyewitness reports
  22. 1 2 Pristaiko (2006), p. 160
  23. ↑ 35 dokuments, p. 41–105.
  24. ↑ Hynda (2012), pp. 429–441
  25. ↑ Hynda (2012), p. 27
  26. 1 2 Pristaiko (2006), p. 21
  27. ↑ Pristaiko (2006), p. 22
  28. ↑ Hynda (2012), pp. 322–323
  29. ↑ Pristaiko (2006), p. 19
  30. 1 2 3 Pristaiko (2006), p. 30
  31. ↑ Hynda (2012), p. 323
  32. ↑ Pristaiko (2006), pp. 23–25
  33. ↑ http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Start-Flakelf_6_aug_1942.jpg
  34. 1 2 Pristaiko (2006), p. 29
  35. ↑ Foto 2
  36. ↑ Bredenbrock (2008), p. 510
  37. ↑ Pristaiko (2006), p. 74
  38. ↑ Pristaiko (2006), pp. 34–35
  39. ↑ Hynda (2012), pp. 281–282
  40. ↑ Pristaiko (2006), p. 34
  41. ↑ Pristaiko (2006), p. 86
  42. ↑ Pristaiko (2006), p. 31
  43. ↑ Hynda (2012), p. 280
  44. ↑ Pristaiko (2006), pp. 37–38
  45. ↑ Hynda (2012), pp. 284–287
  46. ↑ see Dougan (2001), pp. 229–230
  47. ↑ Pristaiko (2006), pp. 104, 117
  48. ↑ Hynda (2012), p. 283
  49. ↑ Bredenbrock (2008), p. 512
  50. ↑ Kuzmin (1995), Футбол и политика
  51. 1 2 Pristaiko (2006), p. 38
  52. ↑ Kuzmin (1995), "Динамо" в защите
  53. ↑ Pristaiko (2006), pp. 36, 47, 53
  54. ↑ Hynda (2012), p. 296
  55. ↑ Stuttgarter Zeitung, 5 December 1973, p. 9.
  56. ↑ No. 147 Js 7/74
  57. ↑ Pristaiko (2006), pp. 110–119, 138–139
  58. ↑ Disclosed myths about the Death match., Focus, 14 March 2005,
  59. ↑ Pristaiko (2006), p. 118
  60. ↑ Dougan (2001)
  61. ↑ p.e. http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/18609772; http://footballspeak.com/post/2012/06/07/Dynamo-Kyiv.aspx
  62. 1 2 3 4 5 Gannon, W. The Death Match: Dynamo Kiev vs. the Nazis. Bleacherreport. 9 September 2008
  63. ↑ http://www.kinopoisk.ru/film/260136/
  64. ↑ http://article.wn.com/view/2012/04/11/Ukraine_blocks_death_match_film/#/related_news

References


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