Leon Sperling (7 August 1900 – 15 December 1941) was a Polish Olympic

footballer A football player or footballer is a sportsperson who plays one of the different types of football. The main types of football are association football, American football, Canadian football, Australian rules football, Gaelic football, rugby le ...

. Sperling was born in

Kraków Kraków (), or Cracow, is the second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city dates back to the seventh century. Kraków was the official capital of Poland until 1596 ...

, and was Jewish. He was a

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...

forward, playing on the left wing. Sperling represented

Cracovia Cracovia is the Latin name for the Polish city of Kraków Kraków (), or Cracow, is the second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city dates back to the seventh cen ...

, the team he led in 1921, 1930, and 1932 to the Championship of

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...

. He also played in 16 games for the Polish National Team, including Poland's lone game at the 1924 Paris Olympic Games. He was regarded as a highly skilled dribbler. He also coached in

Lviv Lviv ( uk, Львів) is the largest city in western Ukraine, and the seventh-largest in Ukraine, with a population of . It serves as the administrative centre of Lviv Oblast and Lviv Raion, and is one of the main cultural centres of Ukraine ...

. Sperling is one of Cracovia Kraków's legends. Sperling was shot to death by the

Nazis Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...

in the

Lwów Ghetto , location = Lwów, Zamarstynów( German-occupied Poland) , date = 8 November 1941 to June 1943 , incident_type = Imprisonment, mass shootings, forced labor, starvation, forced abortions and sterilization , perpetrators = , pa ...

in December 1941. His Jewish teammate,

Józef Klotz Józef Klotz (2 January 1900 – 1941) was a Polish footballer who played centre-half. He scored the first-ever goal for the Poland national football team. He was killed by the Nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1941. Biography Klotz was born in Kra ...

, was also killed in

the Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sperling, Leon 1900 births 1941 deaths Deaths by firearm in Poland Footballers at the 1924 Summer Olympics Jewish Polish sportspeople Footballers from Kraków Austro-Hungarian Jews Association football forwards Jewish footballers MKS Cracovia (football) players Male murder victims Murdered Jews Olympic footballers of Poland People murdered in Poland Polish Jews who died in the Holocaust People who died in the Lwów Ghetto Poland international footballers Polish civilians killed in World War II Polish footballers Polish people executed by Nazi Germany People executed by Nazi Germany by firearm

See also

References