Soccer in a "Death Camp"

Immediately next to main Auschwitz-Birkenau gas chambers,

was the Auschwitz soccer pitch

Several survivors recount matches played on the pitch.

Some include details of the gassings happening right

next to them, some don't

In his 1959 book This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Polish Auschwitz survivor Tadeuz Borowski (non-Jewish) writes about a

match at Auschwitz, whilst the Nazis gas Jews next to the pitch:

"Between two throw-ins in a soccer game, right behind my

back, three thousand people had been put to death."

source

Jewish Leo Goldstein, who went on to become a

professional soccer referee in the US, and a linesman

at the 1962 World Cup in Chile, claimed it was only

because he had read the soccer rule book that he

was spared the Auschwitz gas chambers.

The story goes:

Goldstein and other inmates were being herded naked

towards the gas chamber, when a guard named 'Otto' who

just happened to be a player in the German national

soccer team, ordered Goldstein back to his bunk.

Weeks earlier Otto the international footballer/gas chamber guard

had asked prisoners in Goldstein's barracks if any of them were

familiar with the rules of soccer, to which Goldstein

"finally murmured, "I once read the rule book."

"Otto, who'd organized a team of Auschwitz guards and had

lined up matches against soldiers and guards from other

death camps, remembered. He needed a referee, and

Goldstein, by default, was his man."

SOURCE

William Schick a Czech Jew and semi-professional soccer player

prior to WW2, spoke about football at Auschwitz-Birkenau

"Then all 3,000 of us were marched to Camp B2B. It was the only camp in

Auschwitz where women, children and men were together," Schick said...

The German commander of Camp B2B was a prisoner himself. He wore a black triangle
on the front of his uniform. He murdered someone in Germany before the war.

"He was very, very nice to the prisoners," Schick said. "He never beat anyone in his camp and after the war a

number of his former prisoners spoke up for him and told authorities how he protected them. Eventually

he was honored by Israel as a 'Righteous Gentile' who helped Jews in their time of need.

"He came into our camp one day and asked if any of us played soccer. I was a soccer player," Schick said.
"I raised my hand because I had been part of a semi-pro soccer team in Prague before the war."

He formed a soccer team in B2B. The team played another
soccer team from one of the other camps in Auschwitz.

"After we won the match he gave each one of the members of our team a 6-inch piece of salami,"
Schick recalled with a smile. "We had to be careful with the salami. If you ate all of it at one time
you could die. Our stomachs were not use to such rich food.

"He was a good guy," Schick said."

The Sun Herald - Jan 1, 2006

The above photo which appeared in the Jewish Chronicle in January 2010.
It is of the 'England' soccer team at Auschwitz, made up of British POWs.

SOURCE

The following is an extract from the 2009 book

Allies in Auschwitz by Duncan Little

"Their kit was supplied by the Red Cross and consisted of

shirts, shorts and football boots. Each team had their own

colours - reds for Welsh, blues for Scots and white shirts

for the English players."

SOURCE

Two Jews reminiscing about playing football at Auschwitz

From Steven Spielberg's Shoah Foundation

Via Winston Smith Ministry of Truth