FLASH NEWS
Did the "Death Match" really take place between the Nazi SS and a Ukrainian football team?
2025-06-13 18:40:45 / MISTERE&KURIOZITETE
The 1936 Berlin Olympics were conceived as a propaganda display of Nazi power, and as proof of the physical superiority of the Aryans over all other races. But the whole world saw how the concept of the Aryans as a “master race” was challenged and even defeated by African-American athlete Jesse Owens and his four gold medals.
Six years later, with the outbreak of World War II, the Nazis would try another sporting trick to show their superiority, this time over one of their conquered populations, whom they considered "subhuman."
This idea involved a football match. On August 9, 1942, at the Zenit Stadium in occupied Kiev, a team of Ukrainian players, FC Start – malnourished, forced to work in a bakery, living in constant fear for their lives – played against a team made up of German armed forces, called Flakelf.
The latter were the best players the Nazis had. It is even said that they were kept away from the front lines by Hermann Göring himself, to guarantee their safety. It is said that the match was run by Gestapo or SS officers. The Ukrainian players were threatened, making it clear what would happen to them if they did not lose.
Armed Nazi soldiers patrolled the sidelines. And when FC Start managed to win 5-3, the Ukrainian players were executed, still wearing their shirts. It went down in history as the “Death Match.”
To this day, the slain players are revered as heroes. They symbolize bravery, defiance, and triumph over oppression. A statue of them still stands in front of a stadium in Kiev today. But this version of the “Death Match” is a Soviet myth.
The truth was deliberately distorted by the Soviet propaganda machine, which aimed to turn the match into a glorious example of the victory of communism over fascism. In fact, the match was played fairly, and the Ukrainian players were not killed immediately after its end.
Those who survived the war were forced to repeat the version fabricated by the Soviet authorities, even though they were aware that it was a lie. FC Start was formed by former professional players, mainly from the clubs Dynamo Kiev and Lokomotiv Kiev. After the Nazi occupation in 1941, they were forced to find any work they could. Nikolay Trushevich, the Dynamo goalkeeper, started working in one of the large bakeries, which was owned by the sportsman Jozef Kordik.
They took other players there, creating a new team. FC Start played several matches during 1942 against other Ukrainian teams – including Ruç, formed and staffed by Nazi sympathizers – but also German teams. They won all the matches, usually by deep scores.
So great was FC Start's dominance on the field that the Nazis fielded the Flakelf team against them for a match on August 6, but lost by a landslide 5-1. The so-called "Death Match" was a rematch, scheduled by the Germans to take place just 3 days later.
Details of that match are contradictory, due to a lack of media coverage (the Germans were so humiliated they wanted to ignore the result) and decades of Soviet disinformation. What can be gleaned comes from some of the 2,500 spectators who watched the match that day.
FC Start won 5-3, and the Ukrainian players walked off the field alive. Over the next 10 days, most of the FC Start players were arrested at their workplace in the bakery, and sent to concentration camps to work.
Five of them died within the following 6 months. The Soviet version claims that it was a direct reaction to the match, but this is unlikely to be true. Several investigations that began in the 1970s, and were only completed in the early 2000s, concluded that no connection could be found between the “Death Match” and the deaths of the Ukrainian players.
In fact, Ukrainian players were persecuted, suspected of collaborating with the Soviet secret police or accused of other crimes. After the war, the survivors were suspected of collaborating with the Germans. /bota.al
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