Controversy over campaign to save grave of Polish football star who switched allegiance to Nazi Germany

Apr 9, 2025 | Politics, Society

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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Fans of a Polish football club have launched a campaign to exhume and rebury the remains of one of Poland’s greatest ever footballers, Ernest Wilimowski, whose grave in Germany is under threat of being demolished.

Their efforts have received support from a politician who is part of Poland’s ruling coalition. However, that in turn prompted a critical response from the conservative opposition, who say that Wilimowski is a traitor because during World War Two he switched allegiance to Nazi Germany.

Last week, Ruch Chorzów, a football club from the Silesia region in southwest Poland, and its fans launched a fundraiser that aims to gather 100,000 zloty (€23,322) to relocate Wilimowski’s remains.

They say that the grave in which the former striker – who scored 21 goals in 22 games for Poland between 1934 and 1939 – is buried is set to be demolished because of plans by the German city of Karlsruhe to use part of the cemetery for other purposes.

“We cannot allow the destruction of the grave of one of the most outstanding football players of Polish football and a legend of Ruch Chorzów,” reads the appeal.

Its organisers say that the cost of moving Wilimowski’s remains to another part of the cemetery will amount to around €20,000. Their fundraiser has so far raised almost 16,000 zloty out of its 100,000 zloty goal.

Wilimowski was one of the greatest footballers of his generation – not just in Poland, but globally. His most famous achievement was scoring four goals in one match against Brazil at the 1938 World Cup – prompting a number of Brazilian clubs to try, unsuccessfully, to sign him.

However, Wilimowski’s legacy is now shrouded in controversy because, after Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939, he declared allegiance to the occupier – as did many others in Silesia, a region that has passed back and forth between German and Polish rule over the centuries.

During the war, Wilimowski played six times for the Nazi German national team. After the war, he never returned to Poland, where he was regarded as a traitor, and remained in Germany until his death in 1997.

However, Wilimowski has continued to be idolised by fans of Ruch Chorzów, the club he played for in the 1930s (when it was known as Ruch Hajduki Wielkie). He helped the team to win four Polish national titles, finishing as the league’s top scorer on four occasions too.

Among those to support the campaign to raise funds for moving Wilimowski’s grave was Łukasz Kohut, an MEP from Poland’s main ruling group, the centrist Civic Coalition (KO).

Kohut, who is from Silesia, last week visited the cemetery in Karlsruhe and spoke with the local authorities about the situation. He also appealed to the football associations of both Poland and Germany to contribute financially to moving the grave.

However, his intervention was criticised by Paweł Jabłoński, an MEP and former deputy foreign minister from the national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS), Poland’s main opposition party.

“Łukasz Kohut is standing up for a man who betrayed Poland in 1939 and sided with Nazi Germany,” wrote Jabłoński. “He played in a shirt with a swastika on his chest and took money from the Germans while his teammates from the Polish national team were being murdered by those Germans.”

However, Dawid Malcherek, a local Silesian politician from the far-right Confederation (Konfederacja) party, argued that the people of Silesia had to make “tragic choices” to try to survive during the war and that therefore Wilimowski’s decisions “should not be judged from today’s perspective”.

Meanwhile, Dziennik Zachodni, a newspaper based in Silesia that has also supported the campaign to relocate Wilimowski’s grave, contacted the Polish Football Association (PZPN) for a response.

On Tuesday, a spokesman for the association said that this week they had received an official notification of the initiative and “will make a decision on this matter after conducting consultations both within the organisation and with independent experts”.

Meanwhile, Henryk Kula, who is vice-president of the PZPN and head of the Silesian Football Association, told the newspaper that he would support the campaign. He said he would speak to PZPN president Cezary Kulesza and try to find a sponsor to pay for the relocation of the grave.


Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Main image credit: Lukasz2/Wikimedia Commons (under CC BY 4.0) and NAC (under public domain)

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