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By Rachel Sproule, The Hibernian Football Club Web Site
Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, 24 February 2004
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Rachel looks away from Hibs this week and to team who paid dearly for
playing the game they loved....
THIS WEEK I WANT TO MOVE AWAY FROM HIBS JUST FOR A
BRIEF MOMENT and have a bit of a history lesson and to tell you about my
football heroes.
Nowadays people see their football heroes as someone who plays for their
country or scores many goals week in week out. But my footballing hero is
not one person it is a team. Picture the scene - Occupied Ukraine during
the Second World War. The city is Kiev. The team - FC Start which includes
many former Dynamo Kiev players. This is where their story begins.
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The statue outside the Dynamo Stadium - a tribute to those killed
(infoukes.com)
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When the Ukraine was occupied by the Nazis during the Second World War
Ukrainian sports teams were a thing of the past. But in a bakery in Kiev a
former football star, Nikolai Trusevich was bringing together former team
mates to bring a Ukrainian football team alive once again helped by the
owner of the bakery, Iosif Kordik to bring together a team that could take
on the teams of the occupying forces which included Germans, Romanians and
Hungarians. Football in the Ukraine began again on 7 June 1942 when FC
Start as this team was to take on Rukh, a team of Fascist sympathisers.
Start were beating teams left right and centre. But their biggest test was
to be against a team from the Luftwaffe. Start beat these Germans not once
but twice with 5-1 and 5-3 score lines. These victories were to have
serious repercussions. After a quiet period following the games one by one
the Start players were arrested at the bakery by members of the Gestapo and
taken for interrogation.
These players were taken to a camp called Siretz, near Babi Yar where many
Jews were massacred in 1941. Random killings were normality. The Start
players found survival easier than others because they were much fitter.
But on the morning of 24 February 1943 the day after an arson attack on a
plant in Kiev nothing was going to save three of the players. Ivan Kuzmenko
was the first to die, clubbed in the head and shot.
Alexei Klimenko, the baby of the squad and Nikolai Trusevich, the man who
brought them back together also died in this horrific way. Nikolai
Korotkykh was already dead before reaching Siretz for being a serving NKVD
officer in the country at the time. Goncharenko, who was the final survivor
died in 1996 but still the story of the bravery of these players lives on in
the book "Dynamo" by Andy Dougan and in the hearts of Kiev fans where a
statue of the four players stands proud in front of the Dynamo Stadium.
These players paid the ultimate price for football - they lost their lives.
Whether it was just random or whether the three players who died in Siretz
were chosen specially no one will ever no but what they did makes them and
the survivors heroes in my eyes because they fought to play the game they
loved and would let no one stop them.
Tuesday made it sixty-one years since these players died and after reading
Dougan's book it really opened my eyes to what football meant to the people
in such a torrid time in their country.
One day I would like to make the trip to Kiev and perhaps see this statue
of the players who died and pay tribute. This is something football fans
everywhere should be proud of. I know I am.
http://www.hibsforum.co.uk/NewsItems/February2004/news_Feb_24_1_RS.htm
FOR PERSONAL AND ACADEMIC USE ONLY
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