Shimpei
3 Jul 2006, 04:48 PM
Perhaps it would be tasteless of me to post it on Entertainment/Sport. I don't know whether it can be commented, btw.
So something for your information that may prove to be interesting not only to those who follow the football's (soccer's) biggest championship in Germany:
Today I read an interesting interview with a Hungarian Jew who had been one of the football players in the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp's selected team. German SS-soldiers set up football teams and organized a championship for their own fun in July 1944. This man was selected to play in the Gypsies' team. They played matches near the active gas chambers. This man's "privileged" status (the players weren't beaten by the so-called "kapos") ended when the Gypsy camp was liquidated in August.
He played his last match in an "international team" of Italian, Polish, Dutch, and Greek prisoners whereas the opponent's team were SS soldiers and kapos. The debilitated prisoners lost the match 0:8. The difference between the two teams was around 670 pounds as to weight.
This man watches the World Cup matches with delight, mind you.
"...They played football at Auschwitz on Sundays,
And joyfully panted each breath.
For a few sacred hours,
'Neath the menacing towers,
They skipped o'er the stretched leg of death."
(Peter Goulding)
So something for your information that may prove to be interesting not only to those who follow the football's (soccer's) biggest championship in Germany:
Today I read an interesting interview with a Hungarian Jew who had been one of the football players in the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp's selected team. German SS-soldiers set up football teams and organized a championship for their own fun in July 1944. This man was selected to play in the Gypsies' team. They played matches near the active gas chambers. This man's "privileged" status (the players weren't beaten by the so-called "kapos") ended when the Gypsy camp was liquidated in August.
He played his last match in an "international team" of Italian, Polish, Dutch, and Greek prisoners whereas the opponent's team were SS soldiers and kapos. The debilitated prisoners lost the match 0:8. The difference between the two teams was around 670 pounds as to weight.
This man watches the World Cup matches with delight, mind you.
"...They played football at Auschwitz on Sundays,
And joyfully panted each breath.
For a few sacred hours,
'Neath the menacing towers,
They skipped o'er the stretched leg of death."
(Peter Goulding)