Further mystery was added today the already mystifying story that had its inception in a report from Praha that a Polish-Jewish football player named Edmund Baumgartner had been killed by a Nazi mob in the course of a Polish-German football match at Ratibor, Silesia.
The latest version of the affair was published in the Voelkischer Beobachter, which took notice of the incident for the first time today. According to the Beobachter’s report, the football match took place in Ratibor on September 10 and not September 15 as originally reported and the man who was slain was not a Jew but a Nazi.
The Beobachter’s version served only to shroud the case in deeper mystery, since it is completely at odds with at least two other denials issued from official and semi-official sources.
Yesterday, Dr. Theodor Lewald, chairman of the German Olympic committee, when questioned by newspaper correspondents, admitted that such a disturbance had taken place at Rabibor but denied that anyone had been killed. He said one person was injured, but that person, Baumgartner, was a Nazi and a member of the Schutzstaffel.
Previously, the official German news bureau had flatly denied the truth of the story from beginning to end, declaring that no Polish-German match had been hold in Ratibor since June.
According to advices received by the Warsaw bureau of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, the match had actually taken place in Breslau, Germany, in the presence of 50,000 spectators. According to these advices, Baumgartner was not a participant in the match but happened to be passing the field where it was being held, in alleged violation of a Nazi order that no Jews were to attend the game. Nothing his presence, groups of spectators set upon him and beat him to death. Baumgartner, according to this information, was the son of a Breslau Jew who had been killed during the war. The incident was reported by the official German news bureau, but only a few copies of its reports had been circulated in Breslau before the story was ordered suppressed.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
