On Sunday, August 9, 1942, the “match of death” was played within the framework of the invasion of the Third Reich into Soviet territory. Start FC, a team made up of former Ukrainian footballers recruited by the owner of a bread factory, and Flakelf, members of the Nazi air force, faced each other. The miscellaneous of a tense duel and the half-truths of an outcome in historical review
Iosif Ivanovich Kordik saw it, studied it. Sitting in a cafe in the center of kyiv, he narrowed his eyes and sharpened his gaze. He focused his attention on that rickety, emaciated man, camouflaged in the gloomy landscape of the occupied Ukrainian capital. He was limping, his bones were raised and his body wasted away. He looked like a defeated man. That confused him. He had lost the commanding presence that he reminded her of. A scar on his right cheek proved his identity. He was the man he believed he was, the man he had been. Mykola Trusevych was the goalkeeper of his team, Dynamo kyiv. But there he was just a survivor of the Nazi invasion, a civilian forgiven by the Einsatzgruppen, the German death squads, another castoff who wandered the streets in search of scraps of food.
kyiv was a ruined city in a process of operational reconstruction. It had fallen on September 19, 1941, three months after the activation of "Operation Barbarossa", the largest Nazi military deployment that orchestrated the conquest of "living space" in Eastern Europe and dismantled the testimonial non-aggression pact between the Soviet Union and the Third Reich. kyiv holds the painful record of having hosted the largest taking of prisoners in a single war action in the history of World War II: 665 thousand prisoners. The Ukrainian capital was devastated by both the invader and the displaced: the machinery of annihilation on Jews and communists was completed with the logic of “scorched earth”, the order of Stalin so as not to hand over a city with usable buildings or industries to the Nazis.
There were those who interpreted the invasion as a visit, as a salvation, as a transition towards independence. There were those who preferred Adolf Hitler over Joseph Stalin and, after the occupation, they strengthened their nationalist and anti-Semitic streak. The killings did not delay. Ten days after the fall of the city, German forces ordered all Jews to report with their luggage and valuables to a specific location. The disobedient would be shot. More than thirty-three thousand people were murdered, under the conditions of this provision, on September 29 and 30. The extermination took place on the northwest border of the city, in an area known as “Grandma's Ravine,” which went down in history as the “Babi Yar mass shooting.”
Those who had not died were ghosts of the massacre. Trusevych represented just a sketch of that wonder that he saved at Dynamo three years ago. He had escaped the detention camps after offering an oath of loyalty to the new regime. He was listed, like other colleagues on his team, as a member of the Soviet secret police, the NKVD, but had not actively participated in the militancy of the communist party. He was the father of a girl and the husband of a Jewish woman anchored in hiding. He had been injured in a leg in a battle for the resistance. He had been freed under extortion, he had been deprived of his basic rights, he had fallen into destitution. He needed food and shelter.
Iosef Kordik was the director of bakery number three on Degtyarevskaya Street, the first to reopen after the occupation. “These were not the quaint bakeries of a Parisian neighborhood, but rather industrial complexes designed to bake bread for thousands of people,” Kevin Simpson portrayed in his book Football under the swastika. After identifying it, after being surprised, He proposed food, shelter and work. Towards mid-1942, the Ukrainian capital began a slow course of industrial reactivation. The bread was not for civilians but for the Nazi occupation forces advancing east. The famine was a slow genocide. Once the ethnic cleansing had been completed, any focus of rebellion had been extinguished, the kidnappings, looting and shipments of slave labor had been orchestrated, the massacre was complemented by a ruthless plan to depopulate the city and keep its lands: starve.
Kordik was the benefactor and football, a showcase. He told Trusevych that he wanted to put together a team. He went in search of other Dynamo footballers. Many were no longer there: they had died of starvation, in combat, executed or enslaved. Makar Goncharenko, in a riot of optimism, had kept his loot. They found him and summoned him. Not just him or his Dynamo teammates. From Lokomotiv kyiv they recruited Mikhail Melnik, Vasily Sukharev and Vladimir Balakin. It was easy to persuade them: existence was a fierce struggle. Having food, shelter and a security framework was fortunate. He didn't just employ footballers: Kordik's protective umbrella also covered boxers, gymnasts and swimmers.
Kordik had a team. In March 1942, formal training began in the bakery courtyard, where they could go unnoticed given the nominal affiliation that some had had with the Red Army. They could not use the name Dynamo due to a clear reference to the Soviet heritage: they chose Start FC, a name similar to the Ukrainian one in its English translation. The Nazis had a tournament. They had promoted the practice of football as a placebo, a simulation of normality, a residue of peace. They promoted it with posters plastered on the walls. Admission was free. The matches were held at the Zenit stadium, a public park in kyiv. It was the greatest fun available: the return to top-level football after a three-year interruption, when the war began in 1939.
The German garrisons had six representatives. The Ukrainians have two: Start FC and Rukh, which means “movement” in Ukrainian. The Ruck had a different genesis. His manager, technical director and footballer was Georgi Shvetsov, the person responsible for the reintroduction of the ball in kyiv, the executing arm of the implementation of football as a entertainment policy. Shvetsov organized the competition: he was a Ukrainian sympathetic to nationalist policies, recognized for his sympathy with the Nazi regime. He summoned the same players that Trusevych rescued from the rubble of the city: none of them wanted to play with him. He could not put together a team of talents, but rather one of collaborators.
The Start FC footballers had considered their involvement. They feared both exposure and falling into the trap of complicity. But they sensed that their victories could stimulate the morale of the inhabitants and give new meaning to the cause of the oppressed. They understood that playing it was vital. June 7, 1942 was a Sunday. The Ukrainian teams faced each other at 17:30 p.m., after Flakelf, a Luftwaffe headquarters formation, played the previous match against members of the German air force supply services. Start did not use the traditional white and blue of Dynamo kyiv. In an evacuated warehouse there were red wool t-shirts left: provocation or mere coincidence, they wore t-shirts of a tone with communist affiliation. The shorts had been long pants pierced by scissors. Ankle boots were canvas sneakers, work boots, or shoes.
The bakers' team: on goal, Mykola Trusevych. Seven other Dinamo kyiv players scattered on the court: Mikhail Svyridovskiy, Mykola Korotkykh, Oleksiy Klimenko, Fedir Tyutchev, Mikhail Putistin, Ivan Kuzmenko and Makar Goncharenko. The remaining three, belonging to Lokomotiv: Vladimir Balakin, Vasil Sukharev and Mikhail Melnyk. They formed a club founded in the year in which the fourth World Cup should have been played, founded at the time when football in Europe was a restricted activity and limited to Nazi permission.
Although worse equipped, worse fed, they were still footballers. They beat Rukh seven to two. Shvetsov, humiliated and furious, forbade Start FC from training in the new national stadium, refurbished after the invasion. But Iosef Kordik did not worry: he had the yard of his bread factory for practice. His team only had wins in the summer season. He won with comfort, with sufficiency, with authority. The field was the refuge of the righteous and football, their revenge. That the emaciated and malnourished Ukrainians defeated the trained and vigorous Germans, that the invaded took proud ownership of those triumphs, that the vestiges of resistance recovered their spirit and optimism was not healthy propaganda for the Nazi regime.
The Flakelf was the team in charge of restoring the superiority of the Aryan race. The team of the Air force It was personally supervised by Hermann Goering - creator of the Gestapo, Reich Marshal and Hitler's successor by design of the Führer himself - who exempted the players from military tasks to prepare for the match. Abused and emaciated workers who had played soccer when the world was different faced trained soldiers. There were supposed to be no differences. There weren't any. It was played on Thursday, August 6, 1942. The irreverent Ukrainians revoked that inferior race label by winning five to one.
The kyiv newspapers, intervened since the occupation, omitted the news of the triumph. The next day, the rematch was already announced through posters around the city: it would be Sunday, August 9. “It was a battle of fascism against bolshevism. Curiously, the poster announcing the match featured fourteen Start players, including one from Rukh who had only appeared once, when the bakers' team was short of members. Start had never played with such a complete squad, and often had problems fielding a team with eleven players. And most importantly, one of the most beloved and charismatic footballers, 'Vanya' Kuzmenko, was omitted from the poster,” Professor Kevin Simpson recites in his book.
The heat was the protagonist in kyiv. The Zenit stadium was overflowing. The atmosphere was tense. There were soldiers of the Wehrmacht guarding the surroundings, police wielding sticks with spikes, German shepherds patrolling the perimeter of the field. The Nazis and the collaborators, distributed in the stands. Around the field, spread out on the grass, the Ukrainians. There were no fences or nets to stop shipments that went beyond the limits of the playing field. The most children were useful ball catchers. The tension escalated. The Starf FC locker room received an uncomfortable visitor: Makar Goncharenko described him, years later, as a tall, bald man, who spoke perfect Russian and wore an SS uniform. “I am the referee of today's game,” he introduced himself. I know they are a very good team. Please follow all the rules, do not break any, and before the match, greet your opponents our way.” The flow of visitors increased. An incredible situation opened up: people handing out food, good wishes and warnings.
They went out onto the field: red shirts for some, white shirts for others. The Germans lined up before the opening whistle: they extended their right arms to give the Hitler salute and utter “Heil Hitler!” in unison. “A moment of fear and uncertainty gripped the Ukrainian fans,” says Simpsons. Would Start FC do the same? The players lowered their heads and slowly raised their arms. What at first seemed like a capitulation to German demands quickly changed when the raised arms of the Ukrainian footballers returned to their chests, and each of them shouted a well-known Soviet chant of athletes of the time. They had chanted a neutral slogan: “Fizculture!” (“Long live sport!”). Although irreverent, it was interpreted as a gesture of good will.
Flakelf had additions, substitutes and the referee's approval to exercise physical violence without sanctions. Only the coach was on the Start bench. A few minutes into the game, Trusevych was knocked unconscious in his area with a blow. There was no goalkeeper who could replace him. He recovered, halfway. In the next play, with his physicality diminished, Flakelf made it one to zero. The aggressiveness, the rough play, the impunity, the disloyalty continued without referee intervention. The Luftwaffe team could boast strength and had the judge's permission, but it lacked the technique of the Ukrainians. Kuzmenko scored the tie with a long shot. Goncharenko dodged kicks and established the two-on-one, and then the three-on-one with a perfect volley inside the large area.
At halftime, the Start FC locker room received a visit from Georgi Shvetsov, Rukh's manager, coach and player. He advised them to be cautious and recommended that they protect themselves and take care of the crowd in the stadium. An SS officer reinforced that warning with macabre subtlety: he congratulated them on their performance in the first half of the match before suggesting that they will carefully consider the consequences of a triumph. The difference in the game and on the scoreboard was already substantial. Flakelf dispensed with ideas to impose his clumsy game. The second half gradually faded away. A goal for each team did not change the countenance: the tensions were concentrated outside and afterward.
The end of the match was a Solomonic and arbitrary decision by the judge. It was told by Vladimir Mayevsky, who in 1942 was barely ten years old. “I remember Klimenko dodged all the German defenders, including the goalkeeper, but instead of scoring the goal, he stopped the ball on the line, turned and kicked the ball straight into the middle of the field,” he described. He changed the goal for a metaphor. The deliberate decision not to score was worse than the goal: a blatant humiliation. The referee immediately decided to end the match.
Start FC's four to two over Flakelf It went down in posterity as “the party of death”, just as the newspaper eternalized it Izvestia in 1943. The title fuels the myth. The connotation simulates a dramatic charge that historical research strives to correct: fantasy sells more than reality. The legend consolidates the theory that the winners of the match were executed by the defeated forces on the same night of August 9, 1942. Eduardo Galeano wrote in his book Soccer in sun and shadow that “during the German occupation, Dynamo kyiv committed the folly of defeating Hitler's team in the local stadium. After having received the warning that 'if they win, they die', they began resigned to losing, trembling with fear and hunger, but in the end they could not resist the temptation of dignity. When the game ended, the eleven were shot with their shirts on at the edge of a cliff.”
But not. It seems like a tendentious departure from the truth. The verisimilitude of a photo of camaraderie that brings together and mixes the players of both teams questions the hypothesis of the fateful outcome. The Start FC players left the stadium expecting, with some sensibility, retaliation for their football rebellion. At night they met with their coach and even toasted the memory of Alexander Tkachenko, who had been murdered a day before. They were alive and would stay that way, at least for a while.. The insolence of his victory incurred immediate consequences and delayed reprimands. The occupation forces decided, a priori, to avoid new confrontations against Ukrainians with a Soviet legacy.
Afterwards, they weighed the trauma of the disgrace of having lost to destitute Soviets. The Nazis rehearsed a damage calculation. The sporting shame that a team of “subhumans” inflicted on representatives of the Aryan race could not go unnoticed. The players were heroes. The fans revitalized their identity drive. The authorities were now being mocked. The presumption invites us to assume that any imminent instigation towards the Ukrainian footballers would have inspired a rebellion. The problem would not have been to execute her but to provide explanations to the Berlin offices about a repressed revolt in kyiv.
The players returned to work at Iosef Kordik's bakery. And the following Sunday, they played again against Rukh. They won: no longer seven to two like on the first date of the summer season, but eight to zero. “Georgi Shvetsov, the coach of Rukh, could not bear another humiliating defeat against Start FC. By pressuring German authorities to respond to the rebellion embodied by the players, he found a receptive audience in some members of the occupation government. "Shvetsov's nationalism was in direct opposition to the alleged communism of the Start footballers," Kevin Simpson wrote in the book Football under the swastika. Shvetsov persuaded them: he maintained that Start FC's invincibility challenged nationalist dominance and spread communist pride.
His contribution was vital. The Gestapo, the sinister secret police of Nazism, knocked on the door of bakery number three on Degtyarevskaya Street. With the leaflet for the match against Flakelf in hand, he summoned the players one by one to the factory director's offices. He even called workers who were not on the list, in an obvious collaboration with Shvetsov. They were taken to the Gestapo headquarters on Korolenko Street in kyiv. They were put in individual cells. They interrogated them one by one. They were all affiliated with the NKVD, Soviet intelligence, but it was a condition of the clubs rather than a declaration of militancy and political service. Only one had been a former commissioner, Nickolai Korotkykh. His own sister had betrayed him in exchange for his life.
In each cell hung an intense, bright light that deprived them of sleep. Three times a day for three weeks, all Start FC players were tortured. They intended to force a confession about crimes, sabotage or conspiracies that would authorize his execution by firing squad. Korotkykh resisted for twenty days: he succumbed during the interrogation sessions. He was the first fatal victim of the “death party”, a month later. None of the other players gave in to the ordeal: they were transferred to the Syrets concentration and extermination camp, meters from the Babi Yar ravine, in the northwestern suburbs of kyiv. The camp commander was SS-Sturmbannführer Paul von Radomsky, a sadist.
His life was the same as the other detainees: without shelters, barefoot, emaciated, subjected to rituals of humiliation, doomed to fourteen-hour days of work, destined to cut wood, dig ditches, build roads and repair war damage, victims of cruelties and humiliations, threatened with imminent death, subject to two weekly draws for arbitrary executions. The failure of “Operation Barbarossa”, the defense of Moscow, the severe error of the invasion of Russia taught the limitations of Nazi prophecies. The extermination machinery accelerated. And with it, the revolts. Radomsky, in retaliation for acts of sabotage in German administration buildings in kyiv, ordered that one in three men would be shot. With shots to the back of the head, they executed forward Ivan Kuzmenko, defender Oleksiy Klimenko and Mykola Trusevych, who died wearing his goalkeeper's diver.
The others survived, and with them their history. The newspaper Evening kyiv published the article the last duel in 1958. Then, journalists Petro Severov and Naum Khalemsky published a book with the same name to document and perpetuate the soccer exploits of emaciated and helpless Ukrainians. The veracity of the deed suffered adaptations and reversals. His legendary status granted fanciful licenses. Two Soviet films came to the cinema in the sixties: Third time y The party of death. In 1981, Hollywood presented her interpretation: the famous Escape to victory, where John Huston mixed footballers Pelé, Bobby Moore and Osvaldo Ardiles with actors of the caliber of Sylvester Stallone and Michael Caine. By then, the survivors had received medals, honors and tributes: a monument discovered in 1971 at Dynamo kyiv's stadium - then called Start - honors their memory.
Tyutchev, who miraculously escaped being shot, had been the first footballer to escape the concentration camp. He returned to kyiv after the war: he was too old to return to professional football. He died in 1959. Goncharenko and Sviridovsky had managed to escape with a group of sixteen prisoners. The first resumed his career in the post-war period: he played for Chernomorets Odessa and Spartak Kherson. He was a youth coach and the last of the survivors to say goodbye: he died in 1997. Sviridovsky returned to coaching shortly after the war: he became the mentor of the kyiv House of Officers and a Soviet hero. He died in 1973, nine years after receiving the medal “for military merit.” Mikhail Putistin became coach of Spartak kyiv, before specializing in the lower divisions. He never received the medal: history leaves the doubt whether they did not want to give it to him or he preferred not to receive it. He died in kyiv in 1981. Vladimir Balakin, Mikhail Melnik and Vasily Sukharev, former Lokomotiv footballers, played for Dynamo after the war ended. Later, the three dedicated themselves to training players in schools and clubs. They received the medal in 1964. Melnik died five years later. Balakin died in 1992. And the year of his death is unknown for Sukharev.
The forgotten one of history is Iosif Ivanovich Kordik, the pragmatic businessman from Czechoslovakia who told the Germans that he was Austrian, that he mastered the German language perfectly, who received the distinction of Volksdeutsche -the ethnic Germans-, who ran a bakery, who found the old goalkeeper of his beloved Dynamo lame, rickety and emaciated, to whom he gave work, food and shelter, and invited him to form a soccer team.