4. Snitching, Not Sore Losership, Doomed the Ukrainian Soccer Players
German side Falkelf and Ukrainian team Start FC – whose players worked in a factory under Nazi management – actually did meet for two matches on August 6th and 9th, 1942. About a week later, the Gestapo arrested eight Start FC players. Five of them were eventually executed.
However, the arrests had nothing to do with the matches against Flakelf. Members of another Ukrainian team, that had been humiliatingly trounced by Start 8 – 0, had snitched to the German authorities, informing them that several Start players were former members of the NKVD (the KGB’s forerunner).