October 14, 1944: Tadeusz Gebethner dies at Stalag XI-A, a prisoner-of-war camp in Altangrabow, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. He was 46 years old.
He was born on November 18, 1897 in Warsaw, the capital of what was then "Congress Poland," part of the Russian Empire. He would live just 21 years of his life in a free Republic of Poland. In 1911, he joined Klub Sportowy Polonia, the club now known as Polonia Warszawa. In 1915, only 17 years old, he was a co-founder of its soccer team, which became the 2nd-largest in Warsaw behind Legia, the Army team. He played with them through 1925, and served as team president.
Never drafted by the Russian Army to serve in World War I, he was patriotic enough to fight in the Polish-Soviet War of 1920. After ending his playing career, he joined the family bookselling and publishing company, Gebethner and Wolff.
When World War II broke out, he found himself fighting against both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Captured by the Soviets, he escaped from a prisoner-of-war camp, and led the Home Army to organize camp rescues. From 1942 to 1944, he hid the Jewish Abrahams family in his home, and was able to get them to safety. But he was badly hurt in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, losing an arm and a leg before being captured by the Nazis. They didn't have to execute him: His wounds did their job for them.
In 1981, Yad Vashem, Israel's official memorial to the Holocaust, gave Tadeusz Gebethner its highest honor for a non-Jew: "Righteous Among the Nations."
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October 14, 1944 was a Saturday. Also dying in Nazi custody on this day was Erwin Rommel, Germany's most honored living military leader, who had come to oppose the Nazi government. I have a separate entry for that event.
Baseball season was over, ending 5 days earlier with the all-St. Louis World Series, with the Cardinals beating the Browns in 6 games. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. The NHL season didn't start for another 2 weeks.
There were college football games that day, including the following:
* Number 1 Notre Dame beat Dartmouth, 64-0 at Fenway Park in Boston, making it, technically, a "home game" for the Hanover, New Hampshire-based Dartmouth.
* Number 3 Army beat the University of Pittsburgh, 69-7 at Michie Stadium in West Point, New York. Army later beat Notre Dame and, unsurprisingly, would win the National Championship.
* Number 4 Randolph Field beat Southern Methodist (SMU), 41-0 at Alamo Stadium in San Antonio. Randolph Field was a base of the U.S. Army Air Forces, predecessor to the U.S. Air Force that was separated from the Army in 1947. Their team included University of Virginia star "Bullet Bill" Dudley, who had already played a pro season with the Pittsburgh Steelers. He was eligible to play against collegiate opposition for Randolph Field because Randolph Field was not a college team.
They finished 12-0 and ranked Number 3, but didn't face ranked opposition until their last 2 games: A 20-7 win over Number 14 March Field (Air Force, Riverside, California) at the Los Angeles Coliseum on December 10, and a 13-6 win over Number 20 Second Air Force (Colorado Springs, later the site of the Air Force Academy) at the Polo Grounds on December 16. They were good, but almost certainly not good enough to beat Number 1 Army or Number 2 Navy.
* Number 5 Great Lakes Naval Training Station beat Western Michigan, 38-0 at Ross Field in Chicago. Great Lakes, whose baseball team included Bob Feller and Phil Rizzuto, and was good enough to be called "the 17th Major League Team," went 9-2, losing only to Ohio State, ranked Number 4 at the time; and Notre Dame, Number 9.
* Number 6 Navy beat Duke, 7-0 at Thompson Stadium in Annapolis, Maryland. Navy would beat Notre Dame, but, ranked Number 2 at the time, would lose to Army at Municipal Stadium in Baltimore.
* Number 7 Purdue lost to Number 11 Iowa Pre-Flight, 13-6 at Ross-Ade Stadium in West Lafayette, Indiana. Iowa Pre-Flight was the Navy flying school set up at the University of Iowa, even though that school kept its team for the duration of The War. On that day, they lost to Number 14 Illinois, 40-6 at Memorial Stadium in Champaign, Illinois. On the Saturday after Thanksgiving, Iowa Pre-Flight beat Iowa, 30-6 at Iowa Stadium, which would later be renamed Kinnick Stadium, after Nile Kinnick, the 1939 Heisman Trophy winner, who was killed in a Navy training flight in 1943.
* Number 8 Ohio State beat Number 19 Wisconsin, 20-7 at Camp Randall Stadium in Madison, Wisconsin.
* Number 9 Pennsylvania beat William & Mary, 46-0 at Franklin Field in Philadelphia. To someone whose memory of college football only goes back to the 1978 split of NCAA Division I into Division I-A and I-AA (now FBS and FCS, respectively), it seems strange to see an Ivy League team ranked at all, let alone in the Top 10.
* Among teams in the New York Tri-State Area: Columbia lost to Yale, 27-10 at the Yale Bowl in New Haven, Connecticut; New York University lost to Temple, 25-0 at Ohio Field in The Bronx; City College of New York played the day before, and lost to Boston College, 33-0 at Braves Field in Boston; Rutgers did not start its season until October 28, playing only 5 games, 2 against Lafayette, 2 against Lehigh, and 1 against their own ASTP (Army Specialized Training Program) team; Princeton, until November 11, playing only 3 games; and Fordham had suspended its program entirely.
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