Manchester Guardian Backs J.t.a. Version of “ratibor” Affair

Headlining the story “The Truth About Ratibor”, the Manchester Guardian yesterday printed the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s version of the famous incident as it was originally reported on October 17.

According to that version the killing of Edmund Baumgartner by a Nazi mob after a football game occurred in Breslau, Germany, and not in Ratibor, Silesia, as was originally reported several weeks earlier in the Praha press.

Baumgartner, believed to be the son of a Breslau Jew who was killed in the World War, was a passerby and not, as first reported, a member of the Polish football team which was playing a German team on September 15.

Jews had been forbidden to attend the game. Baumgartner, apparently ignorant of the prohibition, as passing by just as the crowd of 50,000 was leaving the field. He was set upon by groups of Nazis and killed.

The incident was reported in the Breslau Nachrichten the following day, but only a few copies of the edition carrying the story were circulated before the Nazi authorities confiscated the issue.

Since news of the murder leaked out, there have been several conflicting denials by Nazi officials. The official German news bureau has flatly denied the story from beginning to end, declaring that no such game had ever been held. On the other hand, when questioned about it by American newspaper correspondents, Dr. The odor Lewald, chairman of the German Olympic Committee, admitted there had been a game, but denied that anyone had been killed. The mystery surrounding the affair was further intensified by the appearance of still another version in the Voelkischer Beobachter, Hitler’s newspaper, which reported that there had been a football match between a Polish and German team in Ratibor on September 10, not the 15th, and that a man was killed but the man was a Nazi and not a Jew.