SPORT AND ATHLETES
IN KL AUSCHWITZ
Pseudosport
The concept of “sport” in KL Auschwitz was distorted by using this term to refer to massively exhausting exercises combined with drills and singing. This form of sport, referred to as pseudosport or quasi-sport after the war, was usually a means of enforcing discipline and punishing prisoners. Sometimes pseudosport was used as a form of deliberate degradation and physical exhaustion of entire groups of prisoners, work commandos or individuals. This form of physical exercise was known to almost all female and male prisoners. Even children were abused in this way.
Pseudosport usually consisted of relatively simple gymnastic exercises, however repeated many times and for many hours, also in extremely unfavourable weather conditions, in rain, frost or heat. They were often accompanied by harassment, curses and beatings by prisoner functionaries and SS men.
The exhibition presents accounts of former prisoners in which they describe their own experiences with this form of persecution, combined with artistic works illustrating some of the exercises making up pseudosport.
Athletes
Almost all prisoners of the camp experienced pseudosport, including athletes, who were also deported to Auschwitz. They were people of various nationalities, practicing many sports, whose sports careers - including the Olympic ones - were interrupted and postponed due to the war. In many cases, the war completely destroyed their life and sports plans.
Among them there were Polish athletes, before the war largely associated in sports clubs and associations. The activity of these organizations, perceived by the occupant as a hotbed of patriotism, was significantly limited, and in many cases even banned. Many sports activists and athletes joined the underground and the resistance movement; some were sent to concentration camps, including Auschwitz.
Wannsee Conference in January 1942 resulted in the deportation of Jews, including athletes, to extermination camps. In Auschwitz, only a few - considered fit for work - became prisoners. Most were murdered in gas chambers. The names of many of them are unknown.
Sports representatives were also among the Roma and Sinti, Soviet prisoners of war, as well as among prisoners of other social groups deported to Auschwitz from many European countries. Regardless of why they ended up in Auschwitz, only a small part of them had the opportunity to actively pursue their disciplines behind the wired fence.
Sport
Sports life in Auschwitz did not begin with the deportation of the first prisoners, but developed slowly. It was influenced by the general situation in the camp, the physical condition of prisoners and the consent of the SS staff. Initially, the initiators of sports competitions and fights were privileged German prisoner functionaries who, in order to make the duels fought against each other more attractive, allowed other prisoners to participate in them. The observers of such fights that took place most often on Sunday afternoons were prisoners, but some matches were also attended by SS men who treated participation in such events as an interesting spectacle and distraction.
The most popular disciplines practiced in the camp were football and boxing, but wrestling, volleyball and basketball, and even athletics and water sports, such as swimming, water polo and diving, were also practiced. Certain disciplines were practiced over a long period of time and in many parts of the camp complex (boxing, football), and some were practiced only briefly or only in some sub-camps. Despite this, prisoners remember matches and duels that not only diversified camp life, but also had a great impact on their psyche. At the exhibition, you will be able to see photos of camp plans where major places where various disciplines were practiced are marked, read selected reports describing sports matches and duels, and learn about the profiles of outstanding representatives of each discipline.
Much attention at the exhibition was devoted to one of the groups of athletes who did not have a chance to practice their discipline in the camp: skiers. Many Poles tried to get out of the occupied territories to fight in military units established in France. In the illegal crossing of the southern border they were helped by the so-called couriers: skiers and mountaineers, highlanders who knew the area and had the appropriate skills. Couriers also helped in smuggling documents, money and even weapons. Many of them were captured and imprisoned in Auschwitz after brutal investigations. The traditional artistic skills of highlanders were used by employing them in carpentry workshops and the camp museum [Lagermuseum], where they made utility items and artistic works: paintings, sculptures, and bas-reliefs. The exhibition will present selected artistic works from the PMA-B Collections, as well as camp letters, decorated by prisoners with motifs referring to sports and highlander themes.
The exhibition also includes mental activities, such as chess or bridge, which were treated by prisoners more as a springboard from the brutal reality of the camp and an opportunity to spend their free time in an attractive way other than sports rivalry. Since it was a formally forbidden activity, it was played in hardly visible places, such as overhead bunks or cellars. The items necessary for the games were most often illegally manufactured by prisoners themselves. Undoubtedly some of the accessories for games - not only mental disciplines, but others, too - were illegally brought to the camp from the luggage stolen from Jewish victims.
New acquisitions of the Museum
A special place at the exhibition was devoted to two boxers: Antoni “Kajtek” Czortek and Tadeusz “Teddy” Pietrzykowski. Thanks to the generosity of the families of both athletes, the Museum Archives acquired original secret messages and camp letters of former prisoners, which will be presented to a wide audience for the first time at the exhibition.
Tadeusz Pietrzykowski, a pre-war Warsaw boxer, was the first political prisoner to cross gloves with a German prisoner functionary. This fight initiated a whole series of boxing duels both in Auschwitz I and in many sub-camps. For almost three years in the camp, he fought over 40 duels and was second to none among other prisoners. He became the informal champion of all weights in KL Auschwitz. He informed his mother about this in a secret message sent from the camp in 1942.
The exhibition presents his boxing glove, donated to the Museum Collections by his daughter, Eleonora Szafran. He got it just before his transfer from Auschwitz to Neuengamme and he fought wearing it both in Neuengamme and after liberation, as a soldier of the Division of General Maczek.
Antoni Czortek’s camp letters to his wife are unique memorabilia which will be presented at the exhibition for the first time – they are not only camp memorabilia, but also family memorabilia. They have been donated by Antoni Czortek’s son, Bogdan. As he emphasizes, these are the only memorabilia from the camp times in the family collection and unique documents. His father, forced into boxing fights in Birkenau, also with his pre-war friend and colleague from the rings, Zbigniew Małecki, reluctantly recalled the time of the camp ordeal, and his boxing career, both pre-war and post-war, is still awaiting a historical study.
Sport in the shadow of extermination
Everything that happened in Auschwitz happened in the shadow of extermination and always in connection with it. Also sport. It is best illustrated in a fragment of a short story by a Polish political prisoner Tadeusz Borowski, included in his post-war memoirs. The story “Ludzie, którzy szli” (The People Who Walked On) describes one of the football games in Auschwitz II-Birkenau in which he participated as a goalkeeper. The location of the football field in Birkenau was bizarre: it was built right next to the ramp, to which transports of people were brought, and near crematorium number III.
Tadeusz Borowski, Ludzie, którzy szli (The People Who Walked On), [in:] Opowiadania wybrane (Selected Stories), Warsaw 1971.
Summary
The exhibition “Sport and athletes in KL Auschwitz” has been prepared mainly on the basis of the archive materials and collections of Memorial and Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau. It can be viewed in block 21 at the former Auschwitz camp until March 31, 2022.
“Sport and athletes in KL Auschwitz” is the title of the temporary exhibition that can be viewed at Memorial and Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau until March 31, 2022.
The exhibition presents archive materials and artistic works showing the sports life of prisoners as well as short biographical information about selected athletes who were deported to the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp in Auschwitz.
Renata Koszyk