Extraordinary Life and Times of Bela Guttmann: Part 2— Surviving Holocaust
After an eventful six-year period in the States, Bela Guttmann returned to Europe in 1932 for a fresh start. He joined Hakoah Vienna, which had become a shadow of its former self. The club that once stood toe to toe with the continent’s best was now struggling to avoid relegation. Guttmann’s homecoming too was rather short-lived. After a match against Rapid Vienna, where he felt his legs could no longer toil for 90 minutes, he made the hard choice of hanging his boots. But as his playing career ended, we say the dawn of Guttmann the manager.
He got his first opportunity at Hakoah itself. The Hungarian couldn’t do much to elevate the struggling club during his two lacklustre seasons as a manager there. He got his first major break in 1935, courtesy of Hugo Meisl. Like Jimmy Hogan, whom we talked about in Part 1, to do justice to Meisl’s contributions to football, one might need a whole article (maybe even a book). His administrative, coaching, and pioneering abilities made Austria a football heavyweight in the pre-war era. Importantly, for our story, he was the one who recommended Guttmann for the role of managing the Dutch side SC Enschede.
Back then, Dutch teams were divided into regional leagues, the winners of which would then play for the Championship. Under Guttmann’s guidance, Enschede was off to a great start in the 1935–36 season. After winning the Eastern Division (Eerste Klasse East) in a dominant fashion, they now had to fight heavyweights like Feyenoord and Ajax for the title. Despite putting in a valiant effort, Enschede finished two points behind eventual winners Feyenoord. Surprisingly, this came as a relief to the Club President. They no longer had to give Guttmann the massive bonus he had negotiated in his contract in the unlikely event of a Championship win. The following season wasn’t that great, prompting Guttmann to return to Hakoah again. Very soon though, the Anschluss happened and the club was disbanded.
In 1938, Guttmann had a key decision to make. He went to the USA once again to try and revive the football scene there, albeit unsuccessfully. During that time, he got to know about a managerial vacancy at the Hungarian club Ujpest. The club had successfully broken the duopoly of MTK and Ferencvaros in the 30s and, under normal circumstances, it would have been a great opportunity. But Hungary had fallen deep into anti-Semitism. Ujpest’s incumbent manager, who used to be Guttmann’s former teammate at New York Hakoah, was himself looking to flee to the States. At a time when American visas had become such a prized commodity, Guttmann did the unthinkable. He went against the tide from the USA to Hungary and accepted the role of Ujpest’s new manager.
His time at Ujpest earned Guttmann his first managerial laurels. To start with, they won the 1938–39 league title beating Ferencvaros by a single point. Ujpest’s stellar attack produced 107 goals in just 26 games, with the legendary goalscorer Gyula Zsengeller contributing 56 of them. The league victory also gave them entry into the 1939 Mitropa Cup. Mitropa Cup, an innovation by the aforementioned Hugo Meisl, was a precursor to the European Cup/ Champions League. The best teams in Central Europe (which at that time was the stronghold of football in the continent) participated in this.
In the quarter-final, Ujpest came across the Italian side Ambrosiana, which we today know as Inter Milan. Guttmann’s team lost the first leg 1–2 but won 3–0 in the second. Ujpest, once again, were on the back foot in the semi-final when Yugoslavian team Beogradski SK beat them 4–2 in Belgrade. But the second leg saw the Hungarian Champions deliver a dominant performance and win 7–1 (with Zsengeller alone scoring 5). The win brought Ujpest face-to-face with a familiar foe, Ferencvaros. This time, Ujpest started strong and won the opening leg 4–1 at their neighbour’s home. The return leg was a draw and Guttmann’s boys were crowned the champions at their home. Soon after the victory though, Guttmann left the club.
For a long time, it was believed that Bela Guttmann was in Switzerland during the war years. In his book The Greatest Comeback: From Genocide to Football Glory, author David Bolchover has done extensive research to unearth the truth. According to him, Guttmann was staying with his wife Mariann Moldovan, whom he married in 1942. Mariann was non-Jewish and his brother Pal Moldovan hid Guttmann in their apartment on the outskirts of Ujpest. The family, putting their lives at risk, went to great lengths to protect him when the Nazis started rounding up Jews in Hungary.
Whilst there were a few close shaves with the authorities, Guttmann was safe till 1944. But in 1944, he decided to report to a Hungarian labour camp after the Minister of Defence passed on an instruction for Jewish males. Like many of his actions, it’s hard to clearly understand the rationale behind why he did so. The Nazis soon took over the labour camp and conditions deteriorated significantly for the inmates.
Guttmann had to suffer humiliation and torture like millions of other Jews in that period. In December 1944, he and some of the other captives decided to plot an escape when a train journey to the concentration camp seemed more and more likely. They studied the area well, and one fine day, jumped off a window from the first floor to run away. One of the people who escaped that day with Guttmann was Erno Egri Erbstein. Erbstein was another legendary Hungarian footballer turned manager who would lead the iconic Grande Torino side. Despite surviving the holocaust, Erbstein’s life came to a tragic end while travelling with Torino during the Superga air disaster in 1949.
Following the escape, Guttmann returned to Pal Moldovan and survived the rest of the war. But he lost most of his family in this period. It’s hard to imagine how this incredibly dark phase shaped him. More so because Guttmann himself rarely opened up about these experiences. The scars were so deep that even a lifetime might not have healed them. And yet in July 1945, he was back to football.
The war, and everything that came with it, forced Guttmann to make a fresh start yet again. He joined the Budapest-based side, Vasas, where his contract allowed him part of the fees in kind. This was a big deal in the post-war days of massive food shortage. The club was doing well in the league, but Guttmann disagreed with some patrons over player selection and decided to leave.
He then joined the Romanian side Ciocanul Bucharest in February 1946. The club had Zionist origins and would later merge with another club to form Dinamo Bucharest. Once again, the team was off to a great start under Guttmann’s guidance. By early 1947, though, he decided to exit the place, possibly disillusioned by the rampant corruption in the Romanian league.
Guttmann returned to a strong Ujpest side mid-season and helped them to a comfortable league victory. This 1946–47 title win would be Ujpest’s third in a row. But once again, a dispute with club authorities prompted his move at the end of the season.
After working briefly with the Hungarian national team, Guttmann moved to last season’s runners-up, Kispest, in 1948. A few years back, Kispest had called up two promising players from their youth squad into the first team. In the 50s, these two would play a critical role in making Hungary the greatest international team, arguably in history. Their names were Ferenc Puskas and Jozsef Bozsik. As Guttmann would find out, the former had too much control over the Kispest dressing room. In one incident, Guttmann called off a player but Puskas asked him to stay on the field. The bloke listened to Puskas. Guttmann couldn’t stand his authority being challenged by his player. Without thinking twice, Guttmann decided it was time to leave.
It seemed Guttmann’s career in Hungary had come to a standstill. With the Soviet influence on the region getting profound with time, our protagonist started looking for change. And change arrived in the form of Italy.
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Thank you for reading the article. This is Part 2 of a four-part series I’m covering on Bela Guttmann. You may also like to read the Part 1, where we discuss his early days as a footballer -
See you in Part 3, where Guttmann travels to different parts of the world to hone his craft and gain the experiences that will ultimately take him to the top.
Sources:
David Bolchover (2017), The Greatest Comeback: From Genocide To Football Glory
Jonathan Wilson (2019), The Names Heard Long Ago
