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 ...

. 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 159 ...

, and was Jewish. He was a football forward, playing on the left wing. Sperling represented Cracovia, 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. Poland is divided into Voivodeships of Poland, sixteen voivodeships and is the fifth most populous member state of the European Union (EU), with over 38 mill ...

. 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 Ukra ...

. 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 politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hit ...

in the Lwów Ghetto in December 1941. His Jewish teammate, Józef Klotz, 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; ...

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