“For the Nazis, too, soccer was a matter of state. A monument in the Ukraine commemorates the players of the 1942 Dynamo Kiev team. During the German occupation they committed the insane act of defeating Hitler’s squad in the local stadium. Having been warned, ‘If you win, you die,’ they started out resigned to losing, trembling with fear and hunger, but in the end they could not contain their yearning for dignity. When the match was over, all eleven were shot with their club shirts on at the edge of a cliff.”—Eduardo Galeano, Latin American writer and football fanatic[1]
Distinguished Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano, in his lyrical book on the history of soccer, Soccer in Sun and Shadow, relates this famous battle, the “Match of Death” between the formidable Dynamo Kiev team and the best footballers from the Nazi military in occupied Ukraine. Galeano glories in the humble but heroic Dynamo players who summoned their dignity and strength to beat the Nazi select side in convincing fashion. He laments when the Ukrainian players are summarily executed on the edge of a gorge called Babi Yar outside of Kiev. His adoring prose describes the tragic end of the Dynamo Kiev players as a monumental act of resistance in the face of guaranteed death. The only problem is that Galeano’s account is simply not true. In his impassioned reporting, Galeano unwittingly perpetuates the mythic version of the match advanced by Soviet propagandists some fifty years earlier. But the meaning of the match was unmistakable.
Legend often has an irresistible hold on the imagination. When the captivating story of a football match to the death emerged from the ruins of war-ravaged Ukraine, truth gave way to a compelling and heroic fiction. The well-known power of propaganda and sport to command attention during the monumental struggle between Bolshevism and Nazism during World War II was on full display in Kiev during the momentous year of 1942. This apocryphal football match is the story of an elite team of Nazi soldiers matched against a ragtag band of players cobbled together from the survivors of the brutal invasion of Kiev as the Nazi empire spread across Europe with alarming speed. Unable to avoid being caught by the German invaders, these brave footballers from the famed club Dynamo Kiev, with an unbreakable camaraderie and love for the game, played whenever and wherever they could under the yoke of German oppression.
The inspirational tale of defeating the Nazis on a football pitch resonated onward for many years after the war. But which story would have permanence? Soviet army and intelligence services were the first to arrive in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev after liberation, and the former Dynamo Kiev footballers were among the very first survivors to be interviewed. A period of desperate uncertainty followed for the players: would people believe they were not collaborators, a charge that almost always brought with it execution? As recollections and testimonies were collected by the Soviet intelligence services, it became clear that the more potent of the emerging stories was the one reinforcing Soviet-style heroism, the tale that had taken hold in the collective consciousness of those who had survived occupation.
The person singularly responsible for withholding the true version was the minister for the interior in the Ukraine, Timofei Strokach, who knew of the heroics of the former Dynamo players during the siege and occupation of Kiev since he had fought alongside them. Rather than complicating the story that had quickly captivated the public imagination, a decision was made to suppress the true version of events. The familiarity of the story to Strokach meant that he could also protect the players while advancing the myth. By protecting this oral tradition for the first decade after the war, the legend of the “death match” was born, and with it a compelling piece of propaganda. Strokach further prevented publication of any account that varied from the simplified legend that Ukrainian pride had triumphed over Nazi savagery.
The enduring nature of the myth speaks to the power of sport to inspire. It is under this fog of war that the true story of football in Nazi-occupied Ukraine is told. During their occupation of Kiev, the Nazis used football as an extension of their domination, much like Mussolini’s fascists in Italy had done in winning the 1934 and 1938 World Cups, forever linking football with the glory of the fatherland. And the pursuit of these glories began with a declaration of war.
With the initiation of Operation Barbarossa on June 22, 1941, the armies of Adolf Hitler attacked the Soviet Union with breathtaking speed, and one country in particular, Ukraine suffered extensively under the horrors of Blitzkrieg warfare. The three-million-man-strong assault on the Soviet Union covered a vast swath of territory from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Crimea region of Ukraine in the south. Facing another half million auxiliary troops from nations allied with Germany, the USSR endured the full brunt of what the Nazis called a “war of annihilation.” Ukraine, as a prized jewel in the holdings of the Soviet empire, offered robust industrial capacity and verdant farmland ripe for the taking. Eastern Europe offered Hitler the ideal territory to fulfill his ideological mission of returning the Germanic peoples, wherever they may be found, to a rural, agrarian existence. These fertile lands provided lebensraum (living space) for the Nazi empire to replenish itself and further expand. Throughout this process, the native populations would just disappear.
Unexpectedly, the arrival of the National Socialists represented new possibilities, foremost among them the hope for self-determination. But once the battle for the capital city, Kiev, commenced, it became abundantly clear that the Ukrainians were simply trading one brutal regime for another. Kiev, a city set on hills overlooking the river Dnieper, was encircled and laid siege to in unrelenting fashion. Among the thousands of defenders were members of the Dynamo Kiev football team, considered by many in the prewar years to be among Europe’s best. One player in particular embodied the changing fortunes of war in occupied Kiev. Nikolai Trusevich, or “Kolya” to his close friends, was described as tall and supple, and he became the goalkeeper for Dynamo. Trusevich was a charismatic figure, often the life of the party, liking to joke with teammates in serious moments. His style was to play with his feet whenever he could, racing off his goal line to play the ball like an extra fullback.
Another player, Alexei Klimenko, was a skilled defender who joined Dynamo at about the same time. Klimenko was the youngest brother of a well-known circus family in Kiev. Eight of the Dynamo Kiev players ended up being the bulk of the Ukrainian national team in the mid- to late 1930s. Another favored player was Ivan Kuzmenko, better known to his teammates as “Vanya,” a prolific goal scorer and a broad-shouldered man who had a shot as powerful and accurate as any seen in the top Russian league. These Dynamo players, who all served as soldiers in the defense of Kiev, fled the final onslaught on the capital, taking barges down the Dnieper and bringing club trophies and mementos along for the ride.
Kiev finally fell on September 19, 1941, and the city was set afire by both the Germans and the retreating Russians. Stalin had given a “scorched earth” order, intending to leave no usable building or industry to the conquering Germans. At the end of the battle, some 665,000 prisoners were taken from Kiev, the most acquired in a single action in history.[2] This number represented over 90 percent of all Red Army combatants at the start of the Battle of Kiev. The catastrophic scale of the defeat for the Russians meant that the gallant footballers who fought in battle were taken as prisoners of war. Of the civilians who remained, many were deported as slaves or expired from starvation. Just ten days after the fall of Kiev, the shock of the Nazi occupation would intensify with mass killings at a steep canyon on the northwestern part of the city, well known to the locals as “grandmother ravine,” but in time, better known to the world as Babi Yar.
With the advent of this war of annihilation, the Nazi killing machine singled out all Jews in the occupied Soviet territories. German killing squads, known as the Einsatzgruppen, were charged with the elimination of all racial and political enemies. These mobile killing units followed the Wehrmacht into the Soviet Union and within hours claimed their first victims, usually by bullet. Nazi policy, enforced by these roving bands of killers, employed the most brutal means available, in which women and children were not spared. The mass killings at Babi Yar represent one of the single most devastating episodes of genocide in all of World War II. In apparent retaliation for a partisan attack on buildings used by the Wehrmacht, the German authorities ordered all Jews in Kiev to report to the occupying government for “resettlement.” This term, a common euphemism for murder, meant that the collected Jews were marched to Babi Yar in huge columns under the guise of relocation.
The mile-long ravine is located about six miles from the city center of Kiev, and over the course of two days, victims were stripped of all of their possessions and forced to disrobe. Made to walk a gauntlet of soldiers wielding batons, the surviving individuals were then marched to the ravine. Between the religious holidays celebrating Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, 33,771 Jews were killed by divisions of the Einsatzgruppen with assistance from two Ukrainian police regiments. The reason this figure is so exact is that the men tasked with the murders kept meticulous records of their deeds. One eyewitness to the massacre was Kurt Werner, an actual participant in the mass killings:
As soon as I arrived at the execution area I was sent down to the bottom of the ravine with some of the other men. It was not long before the first Jews were brought to us over the side of the ravine. The Jews had to lie face down on the earth by the ravine walls. There were three groups of marksmen down at the bottom of the ravine, each made up of about twelve men. Groups of Jews were sent down to each of these execution squads simultaneously. Each successive group of Jews had to lie down on top of the bodies of those that had already been shot. The marksmen stood behind the Jews and killed them with a shot in the neck. I still recall today the complete terror of the Jews when they first caught sight of the bodies as they reached the top edge of the ravine. Many Jews cried out in terror. It’s almost impossible to imagine what nerves of steel it took to carry out that dirty work down there. It was horrible. . . . I had to spend the whole morning down in the ravine. For some of the time I had to shoot continuously. Then I was given the job of loading submachine-gun magazines with ammunition. While I was doing that, other comrades were assigned to shooting duty. . . . The shooting that day must have lasted until . . . 1700 or 1800 hours. Afterwards we were taken back to our quarters. That evening we were given alcohol [schnapps] again.[3]
As the occupation lasted another two years, more reprisal killings followed the original massacre at Babi Yar. Ultimately, 150,000 perished at the gorge.[4] Among the murdered were Soviet partisans, prisoners of war, and Roma (gypsies). But by the end of Nazi occupation, well over half of the victims were Jews, a fact completely unrecognized in Soviet memorialization of the genocide after the war.
The occupation of Kiev turned out to be complicated as the invaders were first welcomed, especially by nationalists who loathed the Stalinists. Several Dynamo Kiev players were listed as members of the NKVD (the Soviet secret police) in official team documents, and while this status afforded important privileges, it became a lethal danger in the new Nazi order. Many of the Dynamo players worked as nominal policemen, and a few had sustained involvement at communist party functions. But their political associations marked them for arrest at a minimum, or worse, interrogation by the Gestapo. Once captured, the Dynamo Kiev players were required to give an oath of loyalty to the new regime, particularly the enlisted men. Three players in particular fell into this latter group: Trusevich, Klimenko, and Kuzmenko. Also the ardent Stalinist Nikolai Makhinya was included in this initial sweep, and all four players soon offered loyalty pledges, thereby freeing themselves from the detention camps.
The Germans wanted to restore industrial infrastructure and get the bakeries working to feed both the army and the occupied residents of Kiev. Bakery no. 3 on Degtyarevskaya Street was the first to reopen. These are not the quaint bakeries one might find in a Parisian neighborhood but rather industrial complexes designed to bake bread for thousands. The search for workers for this massive bread factory was quickly undertaken. One of the best places to find workers was the center of Kiev, where cafés and shops started to gradually reopen. Sitting at a café one day, bakery manager Iosef Kordik noticed a man he thought looked very similar to Nikolai Trusevich. But the man before him was thin and gaunt, not the elegant man he once knew patrolling the penalty box for Dynamo. “Koyla” Trusevich had sustained a leg injury during the battle for Kiev, and Kordik looked long enough to realize that this familiar man walking with a limp was indeed Trusevich. The giveaway was a long scar on his right cheek.
Like the other exiles in their own land, residents of Kiev were forced to survive on three hundred grams of bread per day.[5] Bringing this haggard survivor something to eat, it didn’t take Iosef Kordik long to realize he had the power to save this man, who in all likelihood would be picked up by the Germans sometime soon. Because Trusevich also had a Jewish wife and a daughter to provide for, the prospect of immediate work would be enticing. Kordik offered him a job at Bakery no. 3, and not long after the arrival of the former goalkeeper of Dynamo, the director of the bakery, a passionate fan, had an idea—“Let’s have a football team.” Kordik took the next step by searching for other teammates of Trusevich scattered throughout the ruined capital, hiding from the occupying forces. Searching the city in the spring of 1942, he found Makar Goncharenko, who had kept his kit and boots with the hope that he might play football again. He agreed to join in, and this diminutive winger proved to be a vitally important player to the team that was forming in the bakery. Not many Dynamo Kiev players remained, though. Some had died of starvation; others met their demise in the detention camps, in battle, or by summary execution.
In winter 1942, hunger was the more deadly enemy as the Ukrainians acclimated to the occupation, now six months old. The Reichskommissariat was the designation for the Ukrainian territories where extreme ethnic cleansing and looting occurred. The ruthless starvation of the local population was meant to depopulate Ukraine and to feed the advancing Nazi armies, as they would “live off the land.”[6] Thousands died from starvation across Ukraine, and even more were deported as slave labor to Germany. The figure initially crucial to the survival of the Dynamo Kiev players was the bakery foreman Iosef Kordik, an ethnic German, or Volksdeutsch, who was afforded special status in the new hierarchy. A network of contacts provided a few more Dynamo teammates, and rival teams’ players also wanted to join the bakery once word got out. From the crosstown squad Lokomotiv Kiev came Mikhail Melnik, Vasily Sukharev, and Vladimir Balakin. It was easy to persuade these players because daily existence was a fierce struggle. Most survivors lacked adequate food, shelter, and basic security. These men in the bakery became a maintenance squad, sweeping, loading, and unloading sacks of flour and bread trays. Sports celebrities from the ranks of boxing, gymnastics, and swimming were also evident in the food factory’s labor force.
Over the course of several weeks in the early spring of 1942, Kordik assembled the players several times during the week, creating space for the workers to play football. As many of the Dynamo Kiev players were ex–Red Army soldiers, each had to keep a low profile, training in the bakery courtyard. Barred from using the team name Dynamo because of its Soviet heritage, a new team was created, calling itself FC Start, a name nearly identical in translation to English from the Ukrainian. Matches were played in Zenit Stadium, which is now part of a public park in Kiev where football is still played, usually at the amateur, Sunday-league level. By the end of the summer exhibition season, FC Start had played seven, won seven, and tallied forty-seven goals for—with a mere eight goals against.
Sport was used ostensibly in occupied Kiev to win the hearts and minds of the civilians; in reality, the football that summer served a darker purpose. The Nazis allowed the matches to pacify the local population, and the games also bought time for the full implementation of the policies of deportation and extermination. When the new national stadium was completed (left unfinished at invasion), a nationalist team called Rukh would play an all-German team to inaugurate the new pitch. From its inception, Rukh (which means “movement” in Ukrainian) was a club based more on political affiliation than talent on the pitch; these players proved to be a team of nationalist collaborators in the end. The player-manager of Rukh was Georgi Shvetsov, a former footballer and an ambitious anti-Semite. Shvetsov was almost singularly responsible for reintroducing the game to occupied Kiev.[7] But Shvetsov was thwarted numerous times in his recruitment of Dynamo players. His Ukrainian nationalism made him a highly likely candidate to collaborate with the Nazis, who shared his hatred for the communists. This divide is most responsible for the reluctance of the former Dynamo players to join Rukh.
As the leader of the Dynamo team, Trusevich was an inspiration, and he resisted recruitment to Rukh because he so staunchly opposed the Germans. Loyal to their goalkeeper were the other FC Start players. In the defense, there was Alexei Klimenko, the youthful but fierce defender, who was athletic and exceptionally fast but slight of build; the de facto coach and fullback Mikhail Sviridovsky, a member of the 1932 Dynamo team and older than the other players; and Fyodor Tyutchev, a defender who found an ally in Trusevich and his opposition to the Germans. In the midfield, there was Nikolai Korotkykh, once a fringe player who was loyal to the departed Russians but now an attacking midfielder given a chance to compete. The three players from Lokomotiv, Melnik, Sukharev, and Balakin, equally as famous as the Dynamo players,[8] all rotated positions across the middle of the park as well.
Leading the attack were forwards Nikolai Makhinya and Pavel Komarov, Dynamo’s top scorer before the war. Komarov was a natural striker but hesitant going into “50–50 balls,” those moments in a game where possession of the ball is there for the taking. Komarov’s lack of physical presence was offset by a classic center forward named Ivan Kuzmenko, a man who cut a large, imposing figure. “Vanya” Kuzmenko had devastating power in his shot, and he was a tireless worker for his teammates. Conscientious in his training, one story has it that Kuzmenko took three deflated footballs and collapsed them into one another, creating a new ball with three times the weight of a regulation football.[9] This modification allowed him to strengthen his shot, an advantage that would later prove to be the difference in one close but vitally important match.
Alongside the hulking, powerful Kuzmenko was the flair player for FC Start, a gifted winger with a low center of gravity and such great balance that he could not be pushed off the ball: Makar Goncharenko, the player who had carried the dream of once again playing football when hostilities ended and had saved his football boots. Possessing a precise shot with superior vision for the game and deft on the dribble, Goncharenko became a crowd favorite. He could anticipate the movements of teammates, moving freely and avoiding the scything tackles of less-skilled defenders. His Dynamo Kiev teammates were so used to his scoring exploits that when he would go through on the keeper, they would start to walk back to their half of the field before the referee would signal for the goal.[10] The other players from Lokomotiv brought with them strong football reputations on par with the players from Dynamo Kiev, and they blended in rather seamlessly to this new Ukrainian side.
While the new team name, FC Start, represented a new beginning, it also meant more to those who wanted to eschew political alliances and any cooperation with the occupying enemy. With the announcement by the Germans that a new season of football would begin on Sunday, June 7, 1942, the FC Start squad was matched up against the Ukrainian nationalist side Rukh. Arranged as a doubleheader, a match between a Luftwaffe headquarters team and an air force supply services team was scheduled at 1400, and the Rukh–FC Start match was slated for 1730.
The three-year hiatus in top-level play meant that some semblance of normalcy was returning to the Ukrainian capital. It also meant that, lacking a proper number of teams, six squads representing the nearby German garrisons would also compete in a series of exhibition matches that fateful summer of 1942. These games represented the most notable diversion in many months. Free admission ensured a good turnout as well. Posters were plastered on walls all over the city, and soon the match featuring the Ukrainian teams was discussed excitedly by the downtrodden residents of Kiev. Players for FC Start carefully considered the decision to play. Would it be seen as collaboration? Or would their playing serve to boost morale among Kiev’s inhabitants, who had witnessed such profound deprivations and suffering that it beggared the imagination just to remember them?
The esprit de corps was strong among the team members as they had endured extraordinary events in the previous twelve months. Though not in the Dynamo team colors of blue and white, the new blended team played in red wool shirts found in a nearby warehouse after the chaotic evacuation of the city, and game shorts were cut from trousers. Workboots, casual shoes, and canvas footwear were the best available football boots. Only the striker Goncharenko had proper cleats. Better outfitted and better fed, the Rukh team also enjoyed youth and greater fitness from the onset. But it took very little time to figure out who was the more technically gifted team. A Romanian referee oversaw the first match, and with the kickoff, the familiarity of the Start players canceled out the physical superiority of the nationalist side. The final score was 7–2.
Vengefully, the organizer of Rukh arranged for FC Start to be banned from training in the new national stadium. The only field available to them would be the Bakery no. 3 yard. But Iosef Kordik countered. He skillfully negotiated the use of another pitch. Without this option, Start risked having to drop out of the exhibition matches altogether. This new pitch was the small neoclassical Zenit Stadium, which today is located in the middle of Kiev, next to a regularly used public park and set in a hollow amid an expansive housing development.
Two weeks after the inaugural fixture, Start played two more matches, the first against a team of Hungarian soldiers whom they bested 6–2 and the second against a Romanian garrison team whom they beat resoundingly 11–0. With their reputation on the rise, the bakery team soon gained the affections of many residents of the Left Bank of Kiev. With the German authorities uninterested in meddling in the affairs of the organizers, the late afternoon games, now requiring an admission fee of five rubles, were must-see entertainment. The main local newspaper, Nova Ukrainski Slovo, published match reports from the beginning of the season but had conspicuously ignored the Start team. With the demolition of the German military team called PGS 6–0 on July 17, the local collaborationist newspaper could no longer ignore the bakery team.
One advantage enjoyed by the Start team was that the Zenit field was smaller than usual. The playing surface was rough, and the notion that a groundskeeper would tend the field was absurd in those days of scarcity. A running track around the stadium formed an oval, and the only seating ran the length of one touchline. The grandstand was located in the middle of the seating area and had a simple metal roof supported by pillars. Rudimentary terraces flanked the grandstands and offered bench seating on a raised embankment. Yet the parklike grounds offered enjoyment of sporting events and picnics for the local community.
As the more technically advanced team, FC Start could possess the ball longer on this smaller pitch and thus avoid being exposed for pace on the wings by their often younger, more fit opponents. Fans rallied around the team. Among their opponents, the Romanian auxiliaries most favored the Start players, who remembered these soldiers regularly appearing in the dressing room before some of the Start matches to share good wishes and to distribute smuggled food.[11] Late in July, the match with a well-regarded and recently bolstered Hungarian garrison team called MSG Wal resulted in yet another comprehensive triumph by the Start team, 5–1. Even with a revamped lineup that featured former professional footballers, the Hungarian allies to the Nazis were easily defeated, in part because they went down to ten men due to injury. Consistent with the rules of the day, substitutions could not be made, even for injuries. Shortly after the match, MSG demanded a rematch and German authorities obliged, prolonging the season, which should have ended on this match day. Set for one week later, the revenge match, the best attended of any of the matches featuring Start, was played in sweltering heat. Undefeated up to this point, FC Start players, already fatigued from a twelve-hour shift at the bakery, contended with a rested and fiercely competitive opponent in MSG Wal. At halftime, Start surged to a 3–0 lead on goals by Kuzmenko, Komarov, and Goncharenko.
The pressure from MSG mounted in the second half, and after conceding an early penalty that was successfully converted, the Start team allowed a second goal in quick succession. Observers at the match remembered that goalkeeper Trusevich was the only reason FC Start held on for a 3–2 victory. Despite near complete exhaustion, both teams embraced after the game, sharing laughter and soaking in the raucous cheers of the gathered crowd. Because Start carried the hopes of many Ukrainians, especially in communist circles, the Nazi authorities recognized an increased threat in the undefeated Start side. Intolerant of dissent and violent in reaction to perceived and real rebellion, the Nazis would not allow FC Start to become folk heroes. This presumed final match against the Hungarians served as a pretext to the much better known contest: the match against the best German football team in Ukraine, a team called Flakelf.
Historians have questioned the air of invincibility associated with the Flakelf squad.[12] Though elite Luftwaffe pilots were part of the team, the majority of the players were pulled from the antiaircraft batteries in and around Kiev. Routinely beating the Ukrainian national side Rukh, the Flakelf (the Flak Eleven) squad was undefeated up to this point. By calling on Flakelf, the Nazis set out to stifle any further inspiration FC Start could offer. The rapid and thorough defeat of Bolshevism in greater Ukraine needed to be matched on the football pitch. The match was set for August 6.
Despite being on a weekday that saw a diminished crowd, this match drew a large number of German spectators. These fans, fully expecting a reassertion of Aryan superiority and domination, left the Zenit Stadium late that Thursday afternoon in profound disbelief as the best of the German club teams in Ukraine lost convincingly 5–1. In a brutally played game with punishing tackles, the Romanian referee disregarded persistent fouling by the Germans. Ignored in the local propaganda newspaper and missing from any official reports, the win by FC Start further galvanized the citizens of Kiev. But the formal response by the Nazis to the positive public perception across the city was immediate. Posters and handbills appeared all over the city the very next day announcing a rematch on Sunday, August 9, only three days later, at Zenit Stadium. Published in both Ukrainian and German, the posters appeared on fences and lampposts and were plastered on building walls and shop windows all across the city. By using the word revenge on the poster, the “unofficial” result was acknowledged in a most public way. With the football season extended by yet another match, the expectations were exceptionally clear: the Germans were designated to win. Eliminating any reasonable time for recovery, the mere seventy-two hours between matches meant that the odds were stacked against the Ukrainians. As the invincibility of Hitler’s armies was being tested in the stalled assaults on Moscow and Stalingrad at about the same time, the Nazis demanded capitulation in Kiev.
Under this climate of uncertainty for the Germans, their best football team in occupied Ukraine found a most determined foe in FC Start, a team half starved and made up of Untermenschen supposedly destined to be vanquished by Aryan supremacy. It was a battle of fascism against Bolshevism. Curiously, the poster announcing the game listed fourteen Start players, including a Rukh player who only featured once in the first game when the bakery team was short on numbers. FC Start never played with such a full roster, and they often had trouble fielding a team with eleven men. More importantly, omitted from the poster was one of the best-loved and most charismatic players, “Vanya” Kuzmenko.
Rumors abounded that Flakelf was reinforcing their squad with established international footballers from across Europe. In the tense moments before kickoff, spectators sat in nervous anxiety, unsure what another Start victory would bring. The late summer heat added an edge to the match. German soldiers, armed with field rifles and leading a squad of Ukrainian policeman wielding pickax handles, were stationed all along the route leading into the stadium. A natural amphitheater, the stadium grounds were also patrolled by dogs for crowd control, which added an imposing danger. These were the same Alsatians used in the early days of conquest by the Wehrmacht the year prior.[13]
Relegated to the grassy ridges surrounding the field, the Ukrainian spectators formed a ring around it, sitting as close to the touchline as possible. The Germans and their associates, unsurprisingly, claimed all of the seats in the terraces, separated from the crowd by a small, waist-high metal fence. Children attended the match in large numbers, and several of the young boys, clamoring to be noticed by the match organizers, hoped to be chosen as ball boys. Lacking nets on the goals or fencing on the ends of the stadium, these boys would be needed. Ukrainian folk songs radiated from the stands before kickoff, albeit more subdued than they would otherwise be. Well aware of the importance this game had taken on, the players in the FC Start dressing room had to contend with an even greater sense of uncertainty and tension. These feelings heightened when suddenly the team was paid a visit by a tall, bald SS man speaking impeccable Russian. Many years after the war, Makar Goncharenko remembered the exchange: “I am the referee of today’s game. I know you are a very good team. Please follow all the rules, do not break any of the rules, and before the game, greet your opponents in our fashion.”[14] Though accounts differ on this prematch visit even occurring, there was a distinctive apprehension among the players about playing this “revenge” match. The sinister tone and intent of the message in the dressing room was clear as day. Concede defeat and salute in the Nazi manner before the game. The debate that ensued after the SS officer left consumed all of the players in the dressing room. Should they comply or resist? In the waning moments before the match kicked off, a steady stream of visitors continued into the locker room bringing food, well wishes, and words of caution as well. Over the course of nine weeks, in this most improbable of seasons, the players on FC Start were more unified and cohesive than ever. The team emerged from the dressing room and walked out, courageously determined to face their fate.
Crossing the cinder track of the infield as the crowd rose and surged forward, the players of FC Start walked toward the pitch for the introductions. Any who had watched the team before would notice that the tired and worn-out jerseys Start had worn throughout the summer had been replaced. Through donations from the local community, red socks and white shorts were added to complete the kit. Many speculated for years after the match that the new uniform looked like the kit worn by the prewar USSR teams. But Goncharenko admitted years after that it was mere coincidence that the team looked the way it did.[15] The Flakelf players wore their customary white kit, and with goalkeeper Trusevich donning his now-familiar black keeper shirt with red trim, there was the convincing air of a genuine international match.
In the moments before the referee’s whistle to start the match, the German players snapped to attention and extended their right arms for the Hitler salute. Roars of approval from the German crowd followed the “Heil Hitler!” shouted in unison by Flakelf. A moment of dread and uncertainty overcame the Ukrainian supporters: would FC Start follow in kind? In a brief moment of silence, which must have seemed like an eternity, the Start players lowered their heads and slowly elevated their arms. What at first looked like capitulation to German demands quickly changed as the raised arms of the Ukrainian footballers snapped back to their chests, with each man shouting a familiar Soviet sportsman’s chant of the day: “FitzCultHura!” or “Long live sport!”[16] Interestingly, this chant worked as an affirmation of goodwill and, more importantly, as an acknowledgment of the significance of the rematch.
Faced with an SS man as an official, Start players knew they would not be able to protest the anticipated rough play of Flakelf, nor could they match the brutal tactics of the Germans. They had to play within the rules and aim to win against a clearly reinforced Flakelf team. The starting players looked over to the substitute bench for Flakelf to find another full squad, while on their own bench they had only the team trainer. The match seemed to begin badly for FC Start, and the players seemed distracted. The harsh treatment they had expected began almost immediately. In the opening moments of the match, goalkeeper Trusevich took the brunt of the physical play. When he came out from his goal to intercept a crossed ball, he was knocked to the ground, and the referee ignored the foul. Ten minutes into the game, Trusevich attempted to claim a ball at the feet of a German player. The Flakelf forward made no attempt to stop his run, and he ran through unchecked, hitting Trusevich in the head. Knocked unconscious and without a substitute, Trusevich eventually soldiered on, though his focus was noticeably hampered. The Germans took the lead on their next attack into the penalty area.
The rough play continued well into the first half, with Flakelf players making tackles well after the ball had left the foot of the Start player. Often made in the “studs up” manner, this vicious Flakelf tactic left its mark on their legs of several Start players. On set pieces, Ukrainian players were often pushed out of the way, and on corner kicks jerseys were held to prevent them from jumping for the ball. But once again it was Kuzmenko who offered a lifeline to the struggling Start team. Because he had trained earlier with a weighted ball, Kuzmenko took a pass from Goncharenko inside the center circle and after only a few strides let fly with a shot from over thirty yards out before a defender could bring him down. The ball blasted in past the Flakelf keeper and the game was level.
FC Start played more defensively and managed to avoid the late tackles they knew would come. Again, in the face of youth and strength from the Germans, the technical superiority of FC Start remained. The perseverance of the Ukrainians produced results later in the half when the ball came out to Goncharenko on the wing and he drifted inside, beating several defenders and ultimately scoring the second goal. And before the half would conclude, Kuzmenko sent a long ball through to Goncharenko, who was at the shoulder of the last defender. Anticipating an offside call, he stepped back so that he could volley the first-time ball. His brilliance stunned the Flakelf keeper, and FC Start went into halftime with a 3–1 lead. The tenacity of Start inspired the Ukrainian crowd, and the rapturous joy of the spectators built to a crescendo. Some of the crowd headed for the terraces where they could taunt the German officers and dignitaries. In response, the German officers called in the dogs to control the crowd. In other areas of the football ground, fighting broke out between rival fans, many of whom were soldiers on leave and well lubricated from a full day of drinking. Ukrainian police and German guards maintained order, but it was the fans of FC Start who would endure the worst of the beatings.
The euphoria in the Start dressing room was soon dampened with the arrival of more visitors. First it was Georgi Shvetsov, the player-manager of Rukh and an opportunist who had much to lose with a Start victory. He struck a conciliatory tone, surprising since he despised the Dynamo team. He advised caution and that the Start players needed to protect themselves and the gathered spectators, who were in danger of Nazi reprisal.[17] Shvetsov’s warning proved to be prescient with the appearance of a second SS officer, who politely reminded the Start players that even though they had played well in the first half, they should consider carefully the consequences of a victory.[18]
The second half began much as the first half ended, with players from both teams struggling to find a rhythm. In fact, because the crowd had become so strident, the physical play of the Germans seemed to wane as Flakelf appeared to be fearful of the Kiev fans watching, in the same way the Start players feared the assembled German soldiers. Start maintained their dominance, and with both teams scoring in the second half, the chance that Flakelf would mount a comeback seemed more and more remote. One ten-year-old boy in the stands that day remembered the match particularly well. Vladimir Mayevsky was brought to the game by his father, and he would later go on to play for Dynamo Kiev with some notoriety. Mayevsky recalled, “I remember that the whole of the central part of the stadium was taken up by Germans. There were Hungarian troops standing on the hill on one side and the rest of the audience were standing along the perimeter of the stadium. I remember our team scored a lot. Our best players were Goncharenko and Klimenko.” Mayevsky was particularly impressed by Klimenko, who brazenly humiliated the Germans: “I remember he side-stepped all of the German defenders, including the goal keeper. Then he ran to the goal line, but instead of putting it into the goal he stopped it on the line. Then he ran into the goal, turned, and kicked the ball back up the field and into play.”[19] Observers noted that almost immediately after this display, the SS referee blew the whistle to end the match at 4–2 despite the fact that ninety minutes had not been played.
The mood after the match was subdued and somber. Unsure of the consequences to come, the FC Start players left the field quickly after the customary handshakes. The excited, triumphant crowd lingered in the stadium, savoring the victory and pushing the limits of what would be tolerated by the German guards as they mobbed the grandstand where the occupation officials sat. Exhaustion far surpassed any jubilation in the players’ minds and bodies. In the days that followed the match, the Start players feared the worst given the history of brutal reprisals from their Nazi overlords since the occupation started.
Instead, they all returned to work at Bakery no. 3. Training also continued, and when Iosef Kordik announced that another Sunday fixture would be played the following week, the anxiety seemed to lessen. The German authorities, likely incensed by the insolence shown by the fans in their jeering during the match, also had to deal with a second embarrassment on the soccer pitch in three days. The humiliation the German masters experienced was further deepened by the newly bolstered pride felt by the residents of Kiev. August 16 was the date set for another rematch, this time against Rukh. A repeat of the opening fixture of the season, Rukh came into the match on a wave of momentum, having accumulated a number of victories, including a win against an up-and-coming local team called Sport. Showing no ill effects from the recent grueling schedule, FC Start improved on their original 7–2 score line against Rukh with a comprehensive 8–0 thrashing of the Ukrainian nationalist squad. Though this final match was much more disciplined than any of the other games that summer, the Start players could not anticipate the storm that was coming.
Working in the shadows was Georgi Shvetsov, the manager for Rukh, who could not abide another humiliating defeat to FC Start. Lobbying the German authorities for a response to the rebelliousness embodied by the victorious Start players, he found a receptive audience among some in the occupying government. Shvetsov’s nationalism was in direct opposition to the presumed communism of the Start players. Claiming that FC Start challenged the authority of military rule and that a propaganda victory had been handed to the communists, Shvetsov apparently persuaded the Nazis to arrest the Start team.[20] With the handbill from the final game against Flakelf in hand, Gestapo agents appeared at the bakery and called players individually into Kordik’s office. Because some names like Kuzmenko (who did not originally appear on the advertising poster) and Gundarev (who was actually a Rukh player) did not appear on the arrest list, it was clear that Shvetsov played some collaborative role in the arrests.
As each player made his way to the bakery office, the presence of the Gestapo was immediately alarming. The subsequent one-by-one disappearance of each footballer into a waiting car left no more doubts. One player not at the factory was the last to be arrested. The player-coach Mikhail Sviridovsky was spotted refereeing a local match as part of his secret training for one of the local teams, a violation of occupation rules requiring all labor to be registered. He was taken to the Gestapo headquarters with the rest of his Start teammates. Prisoners were placed in separate cells facing each other and able to see one another. Gestapo interrogators individually tortured and questioned the players. One player was singled out during the arrest, a former Soviet commissar, Nickolai Korotkykh, the only professional NKVD officer on the FC Start team. Korotkykh was from a rural industrial town in Russia and served in the Soviet secret police for two years before the war.[21] It is unlikely that his teammates knew about his link to Stalin’s terror organization. Though all of the Start players were loosely affiliated with the NKVD, it was Korotkykh who had actually served as an officer responsible for enforcing Stalinist policies.
With a standing order to shoot any Soviet political officials, the exposure of this player was a shock to the other Start players. Speculation was that their midfielder teammate Korotkykh had been betrayed by his own sister, looking to save her family and herself from reprisal. But it is even more likely that the Germans already knew about Korotkykh’s membership in the NKVD as he was immediately singled out upon arriving at the Gestapo prison. The others were interrogated three times daily for three weeks under an intense bright light that hung in each cell, with physical punishment alternating with intense questioning. Bizarrely, many of the prisoners had endured similar treatment for years during Soviet-era inquisitions. Torture, savage beatings, and sleep deprivation quickly took their toll. The Gestapo wanted any sort of forced confession, for any crime—petty theft, sabotage, or conspiracy. Strikingly, none of the players caved under the cruel pressure. But, eventually, Korotkykh succumbed to twenty straight days of interrogation, dying in a Gestapo prison cell, separated from the others. The remaining prisoners were taken to the Syrets concentration camp located at Babi Yar.
Imprisonment at Syrets reflected an exceptionally inhumane reality, even when compared to other Nazi concentration camps where the primary mission was to exterminate. Syrets was already notorious to the residents of Kiev, who knew it to be a place where the NKVD buried “enemies of the homeland.” Divided in two by residential quarters and a working section, the living conditions in the camp were dangerous, unsanitary, and usually lethal. One dreadful feature of Syrets was unique: dugout barracks, hewn from the earth. These underground bunkers with corrugated metal roofs offered the barest of shelter and were quite simply unfit for human habitation. They contained bunk beds too small for a grown adult to lie down on. Starvation, the primary tool of murder, consisted of coarse bread and watery soup. Drinking water had to be carried by the prisoners from a nearby river, and the latrine was no more than a hole in the ground. In such conditions, disease ran rampant.
Syrets was established by the Nazis in 1942 as a subcamp of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin. It was a few hundred meters from the Babi Yar ravine in the northwest suburbs of Kiev. The primitive open-air camp had a capacity of three thousand prisoners at any given time, but countless prisoners, or häftlinge, were shot or killed with gas vans, the same vans employed in the earliest death camps in Poland that same year. Rough estimates hold that twenty-five thousand people were killed in Konzentrationslager Syrets. Communists, Soviet POWs, and Ukrainian partisans all perished there, regardless of gender. One of the few successful revolts in the camp occurred in September 1943, a few weeks before the camp was liberated. Fifteen prisoners escaped, and one of these provided rare testimony of the death and inhumanity that occurred at Syrets and Babi Yar during the postwar Nuremberg Trials.
As no one was expected to survive Syrets, the camp effectively served as a killing center much like the Polish death camps of Sobibór and Auschwitz. Yet, upon arrival at Syrets, the ten FC Start players had an advantage—they were in much better physical condition than the typical prisoner. Quickly, the footballers were introduced to the camp guards and the commandant, SS-Sturmbannführer Paul von Radomsky. Radomsky was infamous among the inmates of Syrets for his sadistic cruelty. Responsible for the unending savagery in the camp, the commandant often terrorized prisoners by releasing his dog, a large German shepherd, to enforce his will. Guards under his leadership were given rewards for innovations in torturing and for killing their captives. These severe punishments were typically meted out in the center of the camp. In one horrific example, prisoners were strapped to a table, with their arms and legs spread apart and tied down, and beaten by whip, sometimes until death.
The daily routine inside the camp was grueling. Days began with a predawn roll call lasting for hours. Any missing prisoners were accounted for, and the dead were identified and taken away for disposal. Harsh physical exercises often followed humiliation rituals. Prisoners did not wear uniforms; they wore what they brought on their bodies into the camp. After the roll call, prisoners marched out of the camp for hard physical labor, which involved cutting lumber, digging ditches, building roads, and repairing war damage. The workday ended some fourteen hours later with prisoners returning to the camp at 1800.
All of the prisoners, especially the well-known footballers of FC Start, lived under the constant threat of imminent death. Executions were scheduled twice a week on Fridays and Saturdays, especially for prisoners caught escaping. Commandant Radomsky was always present at these executions, and typically, twenty-five randomly chosen prisoners were executed. The once-healthy Start teammates began to look more and more haggard as their well-worn clothes became tattered rags covering skeletal frames. Most prisoners walked the grounds barefoot and half naked. Emaciated, the captives grew more pitiful in appearance with each passing day. The daily regime in the camp was so sadistically cruel that even if you survived the beatings, starvation, and random selections for murder, you still might fall prey to an obscenely arbitrary rule unknown to all but the person choosing to enforce it.
The ever-increasing savagery of Syrets challenged the survival capacities of the Start players, particularly when the fortunes of war changed for the Germans in late 1942 and prison guards accelerated their efforts at extermination. Goalkeeper Nikolai Trusevich, ever the encouragement to his fellow prisoners, passed on messages when he could, boosting morale much as he had done as a team leader on the field just a few months earlier. Acts of sabotage increased, and an arson attack on German administration buildings in Kiev at the end of February 1943 provoked the rage of Commandant Radomsky. When word of the attack reached the prisoners, they expected the worst. The alarm for roll call was sounded on the morning of February 23 and the captives scrambled into formation. Guards then walked behind each line, delivering random blows to the backs of select prisoners. At these random intervals, another guard followed behind and delivered a bullet to the back of the head of the stunned man. In retaliation for the partisan attacks in Kiev, Radomsky had decreed that every third man would be executed in this manner.
The silence that followed the sound of boots walking the frozen ground was the ultimate terror for these prisoners. If a man turned to look, he too was shot. As several men lay dead or dying, this is how death came to the once imposing FC Start striker Ivan Kuzmenko. A shadow of his former self, it was said that it took several blows of a rifle butt to bring the staggered Vanya to his knees. The bullet behind his ear quickly ended his suffering. On down the execution line, Klimenko and Trusevich also met their end. Trusevich died in his trademark black jersey with red trim, which he had worn for the final match he played in six months earlier. The bodies of the three murdered players were later unceremoniously dumped in the ravine at Babi Yar, buried like thousands of others before them.
That the surviving Start players had lost the three most charismatic, stalwart players on the team all at once was too much to bear. Expecting the same end for themselves, the prisoners struggled to find reasons to live. When news of the escape of Makar Goncharenko from a work detail at a boot-mending workshop outside of the camp reached the surviving group members, their spirits soared. Liberation finally came to Kiev in the early morning hours of November 6, 1943. As prisoners stumbled out of the Syrets concentration camp, they emerged into a city that had been completely devastated and set aflame by the retreating German army.
Within days of reclaiming the Ukrainian capital, Soviet authorities began to collect information on what had taken place during the occupation. Among countless stories of death at Babi Yar and of heroism on the urban battlefield, there were these accounts of survival through sport. FC Start had inspired locals to small acts of heroism: hidden artwork was revealed, icons restored to churches, remaining Jews hidden, and smuggled survivors returned to the light of day. When the war was over, the footballers from Kiev faced intense scrutiny for their activities during the war. In the eyes of many Soviet citizens, any actions other than armed confrontation during the war years were tantamount to cooperation. In turn, the surviving Start players were soon arrested and interrogated by local communist leaders and the new version of the Soviet secret police. Hastily formed tribunals initially regarded the footballers as collaborators (“servants of the occupants”),[22] but in return for their cooperation and silence, they were cleared of these charges, which would have brought execution or deportation to a Siberian gulag.
Soviet ideologues developed a comprehensive mythology of what had happened in occupied Ukraine. Government officials ensured that all narratives related to the football played during the summer of 1942 fit the Stalinist message. The new, official story emphasized the immediate and supposedly glorious death of all the FC Start players at the hands of the Nazi invaders. Censorship of the actual events continued well into the 1960s, when fragments of the true story were smuggled out of Ukraine. To this day, there are considerable variations in the telling of the events surrounding the Match of Death, with conspicuous gaps in the tale. Recognition finally came to most of the players of FC Start at the same time that the broader story became popularly understood. Posthumous medals were awarded to the four murdered players, and the rest were given medals for military valor.[23] In 1971, the footballers of FC Start were canonized as Soviet heroes with a granite memorial to the four slain players near the entrance gates of the modern Dynamo Kiev stadium. Sculpted from a single block of granite nearly ten feet tall, the rough-hewn monument features the martyred men, standing four across with square jaws, locking arms and looking tall and strong. The faces of the heroes surface from a recess in the face of the stone. The unnamed men, presumably Kuzmenko, Trusevich, Klimenko, and Korotkykh, are wearing their football shirts, muscles clearly defining them as they once were before the ravages of war. One figure on the far left looks down, almost regretfully.[24] Modern club anthologies for Dynamo Kiev make frequent reference to these heroic events of the “Great Patriotic War.”
Another statue in the Ukrainian capital commemorates poignantly the Match of Death. It stands on the walkway leading into the old FC Start stadium, now part of a public park. Atop a fluted classical column rests a muscular, valiant figure kicking a football across the prone body of a vanquished eagle, representing the Third Reich. Both the monument and the myth of the death match once served the propaganda aims of the victorious Soviet system. FC Start winger Makar Goncharenko, who died in 1998 at age eighty-six, placed the deaths of his footballing comrades in the proper context. In his eyes, the war was
a desperate fight for survival which ended badly for four players. Unfortunately they did not die because they were great football players, or great Dynamo players, and not even because Korotkykh was working for the NKVD. 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. The death of the Dynamo players is not so very different from many other deaths. . . . In those days, people were shot randomly; anyone could be shot, partisans, commissars, Jews, gypsies, saboteurs, thieves. At the beginning of 1943, when the situation at the front changed and resistance in Kiev started going up, executions became more common and basically anyone who was not serving the occupants could be executed or sent to Germany for work.[25]
These footballers became surrogates for the catastrophic losses endured across Ukraine. No single country lost more lives in World War II than Ukraine, and other than Poland no nation lost more Jewish lives, 1.5 million all told.[26] Remarkably, amid such commonplace agony and death, most of the FC Start players managed to survive. Without football, their survival to the end of the war was scarcely better than chance. The four men who died at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators did so having played the game they loved in the worst conditions imaginable. These inspirations of the past, built on profound sacrifice and team unity, show once again that football has the power to inspire and to conquer oppression.
Galeano, Football in Sun and Shadow, 39.
Karel C. Berkhoff, Harvest of Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine under Nazi Rule (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2004), 91.
Kurt Werner was a member of Sonderkommando 4a of Einsatzgruppen C. His testimony comes from Ernst Klee, Willi Dressen, and Volker Reiss, eds., “The Good Old Days”: The Holocaust as Seen by Its Perpetrators and Bystanders (New York: Free Press, 1991), 66.
James Waller, Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 95.
Berkhoff, Harvest of Despair, 166.
Ibid., 164.
Andy Dougan, Dynamo: Triumph and Tragedy in Nazi-Occupied Europe (Guilford, CT: Lyons Press, 2002), 127.
Ibid., 136.
Ibid., 131.
Ibid., 132.
Ibid., 147.
Ibid., 151, and Andrew Gregorovich, Forum: A Ukrainian Review (Spring–Summer 1994): 18.
Dougan, Dynamo, 162.
Ibid., 164.
I. Konunchuk and I. Korolkov, “Chi bur ‘match smerti’ u Kievi?,” Ukraina moloda, December 12, 1996, 8.
Dougan, Dynamo, 171.
Ibid., 178.
Gregorovich, Forum, 18, and Anatoly Kuznetsov, “The Dynamo Team: Legend and Fact,” in The Global Game: Writers on Soccer, ed. John Turnbull, Thom Satterlee, and Alon Raab (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2008), 227.
Dougan, Dynamo, 179.
Ibid., 185.
Ibid., 187.
Berkhoff, Harvest of Despair, 305.
James Riordan, “The Match of Death: Kiev, 9 August 1942,” Soccer and Society 4, no. 1 (Spring 2003): 90.
Gregorovich, Forum, 17.
Dougan, Dynamo, 229–31.
Martin Winstone, The Holocaust Sites of Europe: An Historical Guide (London: IB Taurus, 2010), 373.