Sport and National Socialism – joy and terror in the football stadium

The forced labor memorial is located in the northeast of Leipzig, on the site that once housed the largest armaments factory in Saxony. Anja Kruse, responsible for education and outreach at the memorial, runs her index finger across a screen and taps from one photo to the next. During the war, companies in Leipzig built barracks for forced laborers on at least ten sports fields. “These weren’t just any meadows on the outskirts of the city,” says Anja Kruse. “These were popular and lively places where many people used to spend their free time.”

Between 1939 and 1945, the National Socialists forced more than 20 million people to work for the German economy. In Leipzig alone there were 75,000. The workers came from all over Europe, but especially from the Soviet Union.

In Leipzig, for example, the Rudolph Sack agricultural machinery factory specialized in the production of trenches. To accommodate 1,000 forced laborers, the company leased property from the gymnastics and exercise games club. 16 barracks were built here. Anja Kruse speaks of a complex system: “Sports clubs rented out places and rooms. They also benefited indirectly from forced labor.”

At least 170 sports fields used as forced labor camps

In its research, the memorial relies on Allied aerial photographs, mostly from 1944 and 1945. From these, Kruse can see old barracks on the sports fields that were demolished after the war. The team then uses these findings to develop digital tours.

In total, at least 170 sports fields in Germany and Austria were used as forced labor camps. A research network at the Lower Saxony memorial sites “Gestapokeller” and “Augustaschacht” has developed a database on the subject. The title of the project: “From a place of jubilation to a place of injustice”.

One place where this title particularly applies is the Praterstadion in Vienna, which was renamed in 1992 after the Austrian coaching legend Ernst Happel. What is not common knowledge in Austria: In September 1939, the Gestapo in Vienna arrested more than 1,000 Polish and stateless Jews – and interned them in the Prater Stadium. Most were held in Sector B, below the stands. Others had to spend the cold nights outdoors.

Stadiums can be used as prisons

The historian Bernhard Hachleitner lives in Vienna not far from the stadium. He dedicated his dissertation to construction. As cynical as it may sound, he says, stadiums like the one in Vienna are suitable as prison camps. Inside, a few soldiers were able to monitor many prisoners. The infrastructure was also in place: electricity, water, a loudspeaker system and access gates for vans.

During the interview, Bernhard Hachleitner highlights one aspect in particular: the Jewish prisoners had to endure “racial biology” examinations by the Natural History Museum in Vienna in the Prater Stadium. “Among other things, noses were measured and face masks were made out of plaster,” explains the historian. “Apparently they wanted to document the Jews before their extermination.”

After the examinations, the Jewish prisoners were taken to Vienna’s Westbahnhof train station and from there to the Buchenwald concentration camp. Only 26 of them survived the Holocaust. A few days later, in October 1939, football games took place again in the Prater Stadium.

Demands for reappraisal are becoming louder

In politics, culture and business in recent years, it has often been small initiatives that have put pressure on large institutions to finally come to terms with the history of injustice at sports facilities. In football too, committed fans and members make it clear that associations and clubs can only benefit from this. A number of professional clubs and municipalities in Germany are now going beyond symbolic commemoration.

For example in Cologne. A narrow sandy path leads to the former barracks camp in the Müngersdorf district of Cologne. A sculpture and several information boards remind us of the around 3,500 mostly Jewish prisoners who were deported from here to the Nazi extermination camps. The Gestapo camp, built in 1941, was located near a residential area, right in the middle of the everyday life of the population.

“People were crammed into a very small space here,” says Thorben Müller, looking into a semicircle of interested listeners. The aspiring historian works at the Nazi Documentation Center in Cologne. He often gives guided tours, including at the Müngersdorf sports park. “The prisoners in the camp probably heard the cheers in the stadium,” says Müller. “That’s how closely joy and terror lay together.”

Use the appeal of sport

From the memorial in the north of the sports park it is a ten-minute walk to the Rhein-Energie-Stadion, the place where 1. FC Köln plays its home games in the second Bundesliga. Some participants in the tour are fans of the club. The NS Documentation Center would like to capture this attraction. Sport as a vehicle for imparting historical knowledge. Especially this year, on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz on Monday.

Thorben Müller shows old photos and newspaper articles on a tablet. The Cologne Müngersdorf Sports Park, inaugurated in 1923, was the largest sports facility in the German Empire until the mid-1930s. The Nazis held military exercises in the open spaces. In the Cologne stadium in 1941, the German national soccer team defeated Hungary 7-0. “This game was intended to strengthen the stamina of the population,” explains Müller.

The tour in Müngersdorf is about continuities, about athletes and officials who were successful before 1945 – and also after. On the western edge of the sports park, Müller and the group stop on Peco-Bauwens-Allee. Bauwens, who was born in Cologne, was a successful referee in the 1920s and 1930s. After the war, Bauwens was President of the DFB for twelve years – despite his role in National Socialism.

Thorben Müller explains that Bauwens himself used forced labor as a building contractor. After Germany became world champion in 1954, DFB boss Bauwens gave a speech in Munich that reminded a Bavarian Radio editor of the language from the “Thousand-Year Reich.” The editor canceled the broadcast. And during the tour in Müngersdorf, participants wonder why a street in Cologne is still named after Peco Bauwens.