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Fabricated Stories About World War II Still Known by Many

Khalid Elhassan November 15, 2019 35 min

Poster announcing the ‘Death Match’, printed by the German occupation authorities. Wikimedia

36. The Reality of the Death Match

Two matches did take place on August 6^th and 9^th, 1942, between German side Flakelf and Ukrainian team Start FC, whose players worked in a factory operating under Nazi management. About a week later, the Gestapo arrested eight Start players, of whom five were executed.

However, the arrests were unrelated to the match against Flakelf. Members of another Ukrainian team, that had been humiliatingly trounced by Start 8 – 0, had informed the German authorities that several Start players were former NKVD (a forerunner of the KGB) members.

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.