Norbert Lopper is one of the great talents of the late 1930s. Even before the Nazis took power in Austria, the Jewish footballer experienced anti-Semitic hostility at his club Hakoah Vienna. From players, fans, officials. In 1938, at the age of just 18, Lopper fled to Belgium, where he continued to play football and met his wife.
“I think it’s very important not only to describe the persecuted people in the situation of persecution, i.e. not just as victims, but to see them in the broader context of their biography on a larger scale,” says Henning Borggräfe, historian and responsible for research and education at the Arolsen Archives, one of the largest archives on victims and survivors of National Socialism.
The second aspect, I also believe, is that it is very important not to look at the moment when the deportation began, but rather the social transformation that began in 1933. And football is a very good object of study there, because social development can be seen there in principle as if viewed under a magnifying glass.
Game on the Appellplatz
“Footballers in focus.” This is the title of the educational brochure from the Arolsen Archives, in cooperation with Borussia Dortmund. The researchers portray twelve players, some of whom were among the best in their national teams at the time, in Poland, Hungary or Czechoslovakia. Players who are being persecuted by the Nazis: Norbert Lopper, for example, tries in vain to emigrate to the USA. He is deported to Auschwitz and tortured, but survives. His wife and many of his relatives are murdered.
The researchers at the Arolsen Archives explain that footballers were persecuted for a variety of reasons. The Polish player Antoni Łyko, for example, joins a resistance group. He was deported to Auschwitz with many of his comrades-in-arms. There he is one of the few prisoners who is allowed to take part in at least one football game on the roll call ground as a supposed distraction from the miserable everyday life.
Antoni Łyko is later shot. He wasn’t the only opponent of the regime among well-known footballers, says Henning Borggräfe: “One example is the Luxembourg footballer Nicolas Birtz from FC Dudelingen, who was actually arrested as a member of a resistance group that distributed pamphlets, painted slogans, hoisted the Luxembourg flag and used old street names stuck over the German signs again.”
Nicolas Birtz survived. He played an international match in 1948 and was later elected mayor of Dudelange.
Look at local deportations
In the past decade and a half, a network for remembrance work has emerged in German football. Around January 27, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, fans and clubs organize events: readings, trips to memorial sites, the laying of stumbling blocks.
The brochure “Footballers in Focus” also formulates ideas for workshops and project days. Significantly involved: the historian Andreas Kahrs, who has been dealing with persecuted footballers for a long time. “Especially for fans of larger clubs, a very, very important link is the history of the city, the local history. There is of course a high level of identification with one’s own city,” says Kahrs.
“So that we just see that we take up a deportation or different biographies. People learn about how the deportations took place in the urban area and which places are important. Where the eyes are first opened. That these are places that you may know from everyday life, but have never associated with the deportations from your own city.”
Educational trips for fans
Universities, trade unions and youth organizations are particularly active in extracurricular education. Andreas Kahrs hopes that football can also create offers. He himself organizes multi-day educational trips for fans, officials and sponsors. Clubs have already shared the research from the Arolsen archives on their social media, such as Ajax Amsterdam and Cracovia from Kraków.
“Soccer clubs sometimes seem very big and very unapproachable to outsiders,” says Andreas Kahrs.
So it’s a good idea if the football club takes the step and maybe talks to the local memorial site or the local Jewish community. And ask yourself, what kind of needs do you actually have, what would you actually want from us, what can we do?
Andreas Kahrs and Henning Borggräfe will continue to deal with persecuted footballers. For example with the Austrian Norbert Lopper. Because of the severe torture in the concentration camp, Lopper was unable to continue his career after the war. But he soon works successfully as an official at Austria Vienna. And he describes the crimes of the Nazis as a contemporary witness. Norbert Lopper died in 2015 at the age of 95.