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40 Historical Facts Accepted as Real For Many Years

Khalid Elhassan February 14, 2020 34 min

Albrecht Gessler - William Tell — William Tell. Learn Swiss-German

3. Birth of the Death Match Myth

Statue in front of the Dynamo Kiev stadium, memorializing the executed Ukrainian players. Ground Hopping

Five of the eight Start FC players picked up by the Gestapo were eventually executed. However, their deaths were unrelated to their performance on the pitch against a German, and had more to do with their activities off the pitch against the German occupation authorities. Some of the Start FC players, as former NKVD agents, were suspected of having engaged in recent sabotage activities against the German occupation.

Engaging in resistance against the Nazis was heroic in of itself, but it was not nearly as dramatic as the “Death Match” narrative. Soviet authorities, eager to portray the heroism of the civilian populace during the war, decided to improve upon and embellish the story. After the war, the “Death Match” theme inspired a popular Soviet novel, and a hit movie, Third Time. As the murdered Start FC players, they are commemorated in a statue in front of Dynamo Kiev’s stadium.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.