Twelve short biographies provide an insight into the lives of the footballers before the war and establish a panorama of the first heyday of European football.
Yesterday, Borussia Dortmund presented the publication “Footballers in focus: Educational Material on Sport, Persecution, and Remembrance” in SIGNAL IDUNA PARK, which was developed in collaboration with the Arolsen Archives and Dr. Andreas Kahrs. This educational material is suitable for use in schools and extracurricular education. They are aimed in particular at fan initiatives and fan clubs.
During the Second World War, footballers from numerous European countries were also the focus of National Socialist persecution. They were deported to German camps as Jewish athletes, as political opponents, or as resistance fighters. The materials at hand capture the diverse biographies of these – sometimes well-known, sometimes not – athletes and provide the opportunity to approach the history of individual camps and the issue of European occupation through their individual stories of persecution.
Twelve short biographies provide an insight into the lives of the footballers before the war and establish a panorama of the first heyday of European football. Documents from the National Socialist era give us access to the practice of Nazi persecution and the suffering of people who were united by one thing: they were footballers. The educational material is suitable for use in schools and extracurricular education.
It contains the proposal for the design of a project day that provides access to the history of National Socialism through reference to the beautiful game. The examination of sources can also be explored with the help of online tools. Further evidence invites you to search for traces of persecuted athletes from your own city, or to research the role of your own club in National Socialism.
“Footballers in focus” is available to download here or can be ordered for 3 euros by mail (id@arolsen-archives.org) from the Arolsen Archives.
You can watch the entire press conference here in full length.
Voices on the publication:
Daniel Lörcher (Head of CR, Borussia Dortmund):
“The collaboration with the Arolsen Archives is a great next step in our work. We were able to incorporate our many years of experience from workshops and speeches, and are looking forward to many fan initiatives, fan projects, and clubs using the material for their own projects.”
Dr. Henning Borggräfe (Head of the Research and Education Department, Arolsen Archives):
“Our archive offers numerous starting points for the historical study of National Socialism’s persecution with reference to your own life. For this purpose, we develop educational material that can be used directly without wide prior knowledge. Football facilitates one of these references to your own life – BVB is therefore an ideal partner for us.”
Dr. Andreas Kahrs (Historian, AK Projects):
“Football offers a great connection to historical study and memory work. Looking at the biographies provides fascinating, yet also horrifying insights. On one hand, the often-forgotten role of Jewish athletes in the development of the sport becomes clear. On the other, we become aware of the incredible loss that the Holocaust and the Second World War also caused specifically for the world of sport.”
