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Fabricated Stories About World War II Still Known by Many

Khalid Elhassan November 15, 2019 35 min

Statue in front of Dynamo Kyiv Stadium, commemorating the executed Ukrainian players. Ground Hopping

35. Growth of the Death Match Myth

Of the eight Start FC players picked up by the Gestapo, five were eventually murdered. However, their deaths were unrelated to their performance on the pitch and had more to do with their activities off the pitch. Some of them, being former NKVD, were suspected of having engaged in recent partisan sabotage activities against the German occupation.

Engaging in resistance against the Nazis was heroic in of itself, but not as dramatic as the “Death Match” narrative. Soviet authorities, eager to portray the heroism of the civilian populace during the war, chose to jazz up the story. After the war, the “Death Match” theme inspired a popular Soviet novel, and a hit movie, Third Time. The murdered Start FC players, they are commemorated in a statue in front of Dynamo Kyiv’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.