Ukraine is a land that rewrites its history. In 2015, Parliament banned communist symbols, although they can still be found in the museum dedicated to World War II in Kiev. In 2007, President Viktor Yushchenko came to propose a law penalizing the denial of the Holodomor, the great Ukrainian famine. From 1932 to 1933, thousands of Ukrainians starved to death, and even today the question is hotly debated as to whether Stalin’s policies responsible for the deaths were aimed at “destroying the Ukrainian nation,” as he argues. the law passed on November 28, 2006, when the Holodomor was defined as genocide. In 2007, Kiev opened a museum dedicated to it, years before the ban on communist symbols.
Ukraine, then, has seen old statues destroyed and new ones erected, some dedicated to Ukrainian nationalists in the 1930s and 1940s who were fighting for their land, but to do so they killed Jews and Poles. And if necessary, they allied with Hitler. The revolts and war conflicts of recent years have further strained Ukraine’s relationship with Russia. Two lands very close, with much in common, but at the same time at enmity. Modern Ukrainian politics has lived with one eye looking at Europe and another at Moscow. And it is not always easy to decide what to do with historical facts such as the history related to Ukrainian football according to which a group of footballers from Kiev were executed by the Nazis, dressed as players, as they had decided win a match against German soldiers.
A party as a propaganda tool
At the gates of the old Dinamo stadium, Valeri Lobanovski, there is a statue from the communist era dedicated to martyred footballers. The history of that team has been used as a propaganda weapon by communism, but also by the new Ukrainian nationalism. And from so much being told, it has ended up deformed, to the point that it is often said that they were the players of Dynamo Kiev. But it was neither Dinamo nor were they executed on the pitch, just after the match. Now, yes there is a part of the truth, as in any legend.
On August 9, 1942, in a small stadium with wooden stands, FC Start defeated Flakelf, a team of Nazi soldiers, 5-3. The confrontation has gone down in history as “the match of death,” as many of the Start players had been executed during the war. In one country, the Soviet Union, with millions dead to mourn, this was an ideal story to remember the heroism of its people. A way to create myths. However, the legend of the death party had a problem: the survivors. Yes, some players were still alive in 1945. Not everything was true.
On September 19, 1941, German troops, along with their Romanian and Hungarian allies, invaded Kiev. In the following days, more than 30,000 Jews were killed in Babi Yar, on the outskirts of the city. The war stopped everything, although the new authorities tried to appear normal, and in June 1942 a local football league was created with two Ukrainian teams, the Rukh and the Start, a team of Romanian soldiers, a d Hungarians and one German, the Flakelf, made up of members of the anti-aircraft batteries and the Air Force, the Luftwafe. The Rukh was led by Ukrainians who sympathized with Hitler and believed that in his shadow Ukraine could become independent. Makar Goncharko, a 29-year-old winger who had played for the city’s largest team, Dynamo Kiev, from 1935 to 1939, when he had been fired for poor performance, ended up playing in this team. Gontarenko, however, soon received an offer to join some old Dinamo teammates in a new team, FC Start. He accepted. Behind this club was Joseph Kordik, the director of a bakery that supplied bread to the army. Kordik, a Czech citizen with a German passport, turned out to be a big fan of football and proposed to one of his workers, Nikolai Trusevich, to create the team when he discovered that he had been a Dinamo goalkeeper. Trusevich and Kordik convinced some former players of Dinamo and Lokomotiv of Kiev, the local railway team, to join the project. Working in the oven was not bad business: they would have good nutrition and time to train. The team was completed by three municipal police officers who had played in second teams. That is, half the team had never played for Dinamo.
And that’s how FC Start started winning every game. Flakelf were thrashed 5-1 on 6 August. Three days later, a revenge was organized, the duel that would go down in history as “the match of death.” It only had about 2,000 spectators, many of them Nazi soldiers who could afford the entrance and wanted to be distracted. Gontharkoko explained that before the match everyone told them that it would be crazy to humiliate the Germans again. In an age when you could be executed for any nonsense, the warning made sense. The player also explained that the Gestapo ordered them to make the fascist salute before the match, with their right arm outstretched, and they refused. In any case, FC Start won again, although it is not clear how the match went. In some versions, the Germans had come to lead the score by 0-3 after injuring the Ukrainian goalkeeper. In other versions, striker Alexei Klimenko dribbled past the German goalkeeper in the last play of the match and instead of scoring sent the ball away, to provoke. In the end, the Start won 5-3.
But at the end of the match nothing happened. They were not arrested or executed as footballers, as has been explained. In fact, a few days later they thrashed Rukh 8-0. It was right after that match when most of the players were arrested while working in the oven. There are different versions about the reasons for this arrest. They may have discovered that some were former Dinamo players and tortured them to find out if they had also been members of the KGB, the Soviet secret police that controlled this club. Goncharko once hinted that they may have been denounced by Rukh coach Georgi Shvetsov, tired of losing to guys who did not share his political thinking. All were arrested, but only three were executed: Trusevich, Klimenko and Ivan Kuzmenko. And these three had surely been part of the KGB.
The others were interned in the Syrets labor camp, where three more would be executed on February 23, 1943, when after an act of sabotage, the Nazis ordered the killing of one in three prisoners in retaliation and three footballers went to die. Gontarenko, who had been assigned to repair shoes and boots with a teammate, Sviridovsky, understood that the best thing he could do was escape. He and Sviridosvski were hidden by neighbors in the labor camp and so survived. Two more players, Putistin and Tyutchev, escaped when the Nazis left the city and continued to play after the war, although they died relatively young. Komarov ended up fleeing with the Nazis, it is not known whether voluntarily or as a prisoner, when the Soviets reversed the fate of the war, and ended his days in Canada without explaining his version of this party. Two more, Timofeyev and Gundarev, were sent to a prison camp by Stalin, as both had agreed to work as municipal policemen during the occupation and were therefore considered collaborators of the Nazis. Those who survived had to explain the official version, according to which there was no league and it was an isolated match, organized by the Nazis to prove their superiority, in which the FC Start boys, all former Dinamo players and led by Koldik, transformed by magic art into a Soviet citizen, they won despite being threatened. And that’s why they were shot.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, only Goncharko was left alive, drowning in alcoholism, and telling increasingly exaggerated versions to anyone who wanted to hear about the death match, an encounter that has inspired films such as ‘Evasion or Victory’, by John Huston, Books and Stories. But a lot of people just don’t care about the truth. The truth is that not all players were communists, as it was said in the USSR, but many did, which does not like the current Kiev.
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