Euro 2012: Ukrainians remember 1942’s Match of Death
The film was set in a prisoner of war camp in occupied France and showed the
victorious underdogs happily escaping at the end of the film.
Sadly the players from FC Start were not so fortunate and it is claimed many
of them were later tortured or executed by the disgruntled Nazis for their
display of defiance.
A monument paying tribute to the bravery of the men still stands at the site
of the match at Dynamo Kyiv’s old stadium.
But the ground, which has now fallen into disrepair, was recently sold to a
private company and campaigners fear the land may be developed with the loss
of the entire site.
Under the old Soviet regime, the story of the Death Match was celebrated as a
propaganda weapon to show how the Communist players were able to defeat
their Fascist oppressors no matter how much the odds were stacked against
them.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, however historians have questioned
some aspects of the story, particularly the fate of some of the players,
which remains shrouded in mystery.
What is known is that a game took place on 9 August 1942 between a team of
bakery workers and a side representing the German Luftwaffe.
The Ukrainian team had all played before the war for one of Kyiv’s two most
popular sides Dynamo or Lokomotiv.
The Germans saw the game as an opportunity to display their Aryan superiority.
Before the match an SS officer entered FC Start’s dressing room and told
the players that they must give the Nazi salute when they took to the pitch,
he also hinted it would be in their interests to lose.
However in an open act of defiance the players refused to salute their German
opponents and had no intention of surrendering on the pitch.
Once the game kicked off the Nazi side poured forward taking advantage of the
referee’s refusal to award a series of blatant fouls.
But FC Start remained resilient and when they went in at half-time, 3-1 up,
they were again warned of the consequences of winning the match.
With the local crowd cheering them on, the team began to dominate the match
going 5-3 up.
The final humiliation came in the last minute when FC Start defender Alexi
Klimenko rounded the entire German defence and goalkeeper before turning
away from the open goal and kicking the ball back up field.
Nazi revenge was not immediate and the players returned to work at the bakery
as heroes.
But several weeks later all the players were arrested by the Gestapo and taken
to police headquarters where they were interrogated and tortured.
One of the players, Nikolai Korotkykh, was reportedly killed, while the rest
of the team were sent to a labour camp where they worked in appalling
conditions.
When the partisans were preparing to liberate the camp in 1943, three more of
the team were executed, while the rest managed to escape but their fate
after the war was never discovered.
The premiere of a new Russian film telling the story of the Death Match was
recently delayed in Kyiv for fear that it could stoke anti-German feelings
ahead of the European Championships.