Many young football fans wait for the players outside the stadium to get an autograph. But on May 14, 1938, Rolf Friedland, a 17-year-old Jewish German, had a completely different request. “They’re going to kill me!” With these words he accosts the English defender Bert Sproston, who has come to play a friendly match in Berlin against Germany. For Rolf, the match is only friendly in name: this young spectator sees it as his last chance of survival.
His family has already fled. His relatives have planned to send him help to join them, but he doesn’t count on it. Alone, isolated, Rolf only knows that fleeing is vital. “Psychologically, he was desperate.says his son Alan. He would have done anything to escape.”
In this case, trying to arouse the pity of a foreign player. This plan “creative”, as Alan calls it, leads him to the exit of the Olympic stadium in Berlin, where the English athletes are accessible. It is Tottenham Hotspur Football Club defender Bert Sproston who is the most receptive. He stops and listens to what Rolf has to say.
From this discussion, Sproston takes his details and uses his contacts. And then, deliverance. Rolf gets an invitation and a visa to come and see the Three Lions play a friendly match in England. He will never set foot in Germany again.
Rolf Friedland thus settled in Great Britain. Aware that the English defender had saved him from a probable end in a concentration camp, he rebuilt his life under the name Ralph Freeman – note that the meaning of his name changed from “peace country” in German to “free man” in English.
A gesture that saves the honour of the English team
“I’m not sure (Ralph) specifically targeted Bert Sproston.”confides Alan Freeman, as grateful as he is astonished by his father’s guardian angel. Their conversation “must have affected him, which prompted him to act when he returned”.
If Sproston did not necessarily know the extent of what Jews were enduring in Germany at that time, he at least knew the hostility of the Nazis towards them. “Everyone knew, confirms Michael Berkowitz, professor of modern Jewish history at University College London. It’s important not to read everything with today’s eyes, but people knew that something was happening in Germany that was just not normal.”
1938 would also prove to be a decisive year for action. Two months before the meeting, the IIIe Reich invaded Austria. Later that year, in November, Kristallnacht would claim the lives of ninety-one Jews, send 30,000 others to concentration camps, and burn hundreds of synagogues, according to a report by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
The whole of Europe teeters on the brink as the England team travels to Berlin for this friendly match in May. Tensions reach such a height that the England players bow to pressure from their federation and perform the Nazi salute as they enter the pitch. A shameful sign of appeasement that has remained famous.
The gesture of our English defender therefore saves honour. “(Sproston), leaving Berlin after making a decision that was as personal as it was collective, and which will haunt most players for the rest of their lives, is the only player who can remember this match with a certain pride.”analyzes journalist John Leonard, author of Salute! (“Saluez!” in French, not translated), a book that traces the tension between sport and politics at that moment in history, up to that famous match.
Bert Sproston and Ralph Freeman remained close until their deaths in 2000 and 2010 respectively. This friendship has been passed down to the next generation, between Sproston’s daughter-in-law Janice and Alan. As has the love of Tottenham Hotspur, which the latter still supports.
Source: www.slate.fr
