Football on the roll call square

Football on the roll call square

In February 1939, the SS had the makeshift barracks of the special pogrom camp on the roll call square torn down. Shortly afterwards, an improvised football pitch was set up on the site where thousands of Jewish prisoners had suffered and 250 men had died in the previous months.

On a Sunday in April 1939, the first football match took place there initiated by the SS camp management: A team of Jewish prisoners had to play against a team of non-Jewish prisoners. After this first game, the SS tolerated further games on Sunday afternoons, which were usually work-free. It is not known how often and for how long the prisoners played football on the roll call pitch. Soon, however, a new sports field below the last row of barracks, in the area of the later little camp, became the playing field. Survivors later reported that there were up to twelve football teams at times in Buchenwald. For the SS, the games served to maintain the appearance of normality and conceal the criminal nature of the camp. It was no coincidence that the football pitch was one of the places that the SS showed to visitors from outside the camp.

In principle, only a few prisoners were able to play football in the camp. These were mainly those in privileged positions. Due to the hard labour and poor diet, the majority of prisoners were unable to do so. When the little camp was built at the end of 1942, the sports field also disappeared. Occasional games are said to have been played in the area of the camp garden.

"There was a big football match at Easter 1939. Two weeks beforehand, part of the still not completely levelled and gravelled roll call area was transformed into a proper football pitch, goals were set up, lines were marked, the guard team, who played football very eagerly, donated two old balls and on Easter Sunday afternoon, on the commandant's orders, a football match between 'Aryans' and Jews took place. The impartial referee was a 'political man' who did his job fairly and competently, a radio announcer was appointed to report on the game over the microphone so that it could be heard in all the barracks, around 2000 spectators had gathered on the pitch - no admission fee was charged - the SS watched from the windows of the command building and the game began. They had lined up a large number of Viennese, including some well-known players. When, after half-time, the announcer announced that the score was 2 to 1 in favour of the Jews, the 'Aryan' comrades present as spectators shouted 'The Jews are our misfortune' to great merriment, even from the SS in a chant, just as the Nazi gangs had done during their frequent parades in the cities. But it didn't help them, the 'Aryans' lost the game, I think 3 to 1. The football matches were then continued on Sunday afternoons in good weather."

^{The Jewish physician Dr Edgar Rhoden from Vienna was an inmate at Buchenwald from the end of September 1938 to the end of April 1939. He witnessed the first football matches on the muster ground and wrote about them in his memoirs in 1954. According to other survivors, the SS later banned teams with Jewish inmates. (The Vienna Holocaust Library)}