Introduction

By Satish Sekar © Satish Sekar (November 11^th 2021)

Remember Them

At least 403 Olympians, possibly almost 600 were killed in the Second World War. Most died in military action, but some met far more sinister fates. Many were murdered, some after very dubious judicial processes and not just by the Nazis. In the Baltic States and Poland (See Poles Murdered by the USSR, and The Katyn Forest Massacre), the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) settled old scores. They imprisoned and executed Olympians retrospectively.

The Olympic Games was for amateurs. That meant participants either had to be rich enough not to work or they had to work day jobs. This applied to football as well. Harold Kaarmann’s job – a police officer in the interwar years – later cost him his life. This was a vindictive retrospective retribution. He was not the only Estonian to suffer this fate.

However, perhaps the most notorious was the Katyn Massacre in 1940. But that was far from the only atrocity they committed against Polish people in particular.  They were victimised again in the Warsaw Uprising and also in camps ran by the USSR and in the early days of the war.

Footballers were far from the Olympians to suffer these atrocities, which will be made clear in future articles in this series. And nor were the footballers and other Olympians of Estonia, Latvia and Poland the only countries to suffer.