Opinion with Michael Coren The World Cup has come and gone, and nobody scored 10 goals in a single game. But believe it or not, it has been done ‒ by Germany against Russia in the 1912 Olympic Games. It’s naturally the highest total for any German player, yet it’s the fate of the man who achieved this, and that of his friend and fellow German sports star that’s relevant and tragic in this age of spiralling anti-Semitism. The footballer was Gottfried Fuchs, who appeared for his country several times and would have done so far more often but for the First World War, in which he won the Iron Cross. He was the first Jewish player to represent Germany, but not the only Jewish athlete in the pre-First World War national team. His friend Julius Hirsch won seven caps and scored four goals against Holland. They and their families were typical of post-enlightenment German Jews. Patriotic, intensely German and members of what was regarded as the most assimilated and successful Jewish community in Europe. The grotesque unravelling of that situation has been told many times, but beyond the obvious horror of persecution and eventual attempted genocide was the sense of betrayal, of rejection and hatred exhibited not by foreign invaders and oppressors, but by ostensible friends and literal neighbours. In this case, two men who enjoyed hero status in the country of their birth and ancestry were suddenly regarded as despised outsiders. What ended with slaughter began with slights, as it always does. And each time we read today of yet another anti-Semitic insult ‒ sometimes in the guise of geopolitics, increasingly not ‒ we should keep this in mind. In 1935, for example, the national sporting legend was told by his local tennis club that he was now barred from membership, and the German Football Association expunged all mentions of the two men from their records. Social discrimination then become racial law. A precursor of course, but more than sufficient for Fuchs to leave Germany in 1937, to Britain and then to Canada. Hirsch, however, continued to believe in the German spirit. His brother had died for the country in 1916, his wife wasn’t Jewish, he was revered in the German sporting world. This madness simply couldn’t last. He left briefly for Paris, but returned to Germany where, in 1943, he was deported to Auschwitz and later murdered. His wife and children were also taken to concentration camps but survived the war, and his grandchildren, a living tribute to courage and hope, continue to live in the country of their and their grandfather’s birth. It took many years for Germany, and German football, to acknowledge what it had done and for the longest time there were those who preferred to forget or even ignore. That was, of course, impossible for Gottfried Fuchs, now Godfrey, to do. Not that he spoke about his experiences very often, living a quiet life in Montreal, seldom mentioning what had happened to him in Germany or his sporting prowess. His grandson, successful Toronto lawyer Julian Heller says, “My grandfather was really a very humble man, spoke little about his past and certainly didn’t dwell on it. I do remember him saying, however, that he would never forgive them for how they had treated his friend Hirsch, and in fact would never forgive them for what they did to him.” There is now a Gottfried-Fuchs-Square close to the former stadium in which the two men played, and a prize in their name is given to youth teams that work in areas of anti-discrimination. In 1972, Fuchs was asked back to Germany for the Olympic Games. The invitation letter was from Sepp Herberger, the former player and coach of the German national team, a man who had been a member of the Nazi party and participated in state propaganda. He was a divisive figure, but this gesture seems to have been a genuine expression of guilt and contrition. Fuchs had understandably long refused to return to Germany but, on this occasion, he agreed. Not long before the flight, aged 82 and in poor health, he suffered a heart attack and died. If he’d gone, he would have likely been in Munich when 11 Israeli athletes were killed by Palestinian terrorists, possibly with the help of local neo-Nazis as well as a notorious German far-left militant. May Godfrey Fuchs’ memory be a blessing and may we learn that racial hatred is never, ever acceptable. CSANews | FALL 2026 | 15
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