In occupied Kyiv exactly 80 years ago football "Match of death" took place
During the Great Patriotic War in occupied Kyiv exactly 80 years ago, on August 9, 1942, the football “Death Match” took place. The players of the Kyiv team "Start" played against the team of German soldiers. This game ended with the victory of Soviet football players and entered into history.
A few days after the match, most of the players who defeated the Germans were arrested, four of them died.
The opponents of our players were the Flakelf team, which consisted of German air defense servicemen, as well as pilots and technicians from the Kyiv military airfield. A total of two matches were played. The first one took place on August 6 and ended with the victory of "Start" with a score of 5:1. The next game took place on August 9 because the Germans wanted revenge.
Our players were transparently hinted that they should lose, but they did not listen and won. In total, in the summer of 1942, Start played seven matches against the football teams of the German and Hungarian occupiers, winning each of them.
Excitement for spectators and players was added by the fact that the "Death Match", as it was later called, was the last international game in occupied Kyiv, since the head of the city's commissariat imposed a ban on further holding such meetings.
The match ended with the victory of "Start" with a score of 5:3, and nine days later, the arrests of the players of the winning team began. The fact is that one of the “well-wishers” explained to the occupiers that most of the Start players before the war played in Dynamo Kiev, which belonged to the Soviet power structure - the NKVD. As a result, ten players were arrested.
Perhaps the Soviet athletes were punished by the Nazis for demonstrating that the Germans, too, can be defeated.
Nikolai Korotkikh was the first to die in the fall of 1942. He died after days of torture and interrogation by the Gestapo. Three more Start players - Trusevich, Klimenko and Kuzmenko - were shot in a concentration camp in 1943.
For the first time, the country learned about the heroic game of Soviet football players from an article published in the Izvestia newspaper, authored by the writer Lev Kassil. It was he who called the historic match in Kyiv "Death Match".
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